What makes a fruit different to a vegetable?

Answer 1

seeds. Fruit has pips or seeds, veggies dont, but some things still dont feel right being called a fruit, for eg a cucumber or pumpkin, these aare vegetables to me. There ought to be a better category or classification!

Answer 2

The answer depends on your relationship with the two items. If you’re stocking the produce department at a grocery store, a tomato is a vegetable. If you’re a plant scientist—a botanist—a tomato is a fruit. Cucumbers, pumpkins, avocados, and peppers are all fruits. Culturally, however, the grocer is going to call them vegetables.
A fruit is the ripe ovary or ovaries of a flower—the mature ovary of a seed-bearing plant. Let’s say you’ve got a tomato plant with those little yellow flowers all ready. A bee comes along and fertilizes the flower. The flower starts developing into a fruit with the seed inside. (There are four kinds of fruits, which explains fruits such as pineapple and blueberries, but let's not get into that.) And, hey, guess what? Nuts are fruits. True nuts that is, chestnut and filberts come to mind.
Vegetables, however, are the roots (eg, carrot), tubers (eg, potato), leaves (eg spinach), stems (eg, celery), and other bits of plants that you might eat. For a botanist, a vegetable is sort of like the umbrella word for all the edible parts of a plant. Just to keep life interesting, mushrooms aren’t plants at all, they are a kind of fungus.

Answer 3

A fruit is the ripened ovary - together with seeds - of a flowering plant. With most fruits pollination is a vital part of fruit culture.

The merits of this ongoing question, “is it a fruit, or is it a vegetable,” have even found its way before the bench of the United States Supreme Court which ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden, 1883, that a tomato is a vegetable even though botanically, a tomato is a fruit.

Answer 4

Fruit has seeds or pips, veg doesn't. It';s for this reason that tomatoes are technically a fruit and rhubarb is a vegetable..


PS To follow on from one of the answers below - not that it matters that much but a pea is actually classed as a legume, not a vegetable!

Answer 5

Generally as a rule, fruit have seeds and vegetables dont. The reason why they have seeds is that the seeds are the female reproductive organs of the fruit concerned. As a fellow Yahoo answerer has said, tomatoes are exempt from this rule as are cucumbers as they have seeds. Rhubarb is a fruit not a vegetable as well.

Answer 6

There is no definition other than common usage.

For example, a pea comes from the fruiting body of the fertilized flower of a plant, but is classed as a vegetable.

Answer 7

A fruit is the ripened (swollen) ovary of a flower. The ovary ripens when the ovules inside have been fertilized. Seeds of flowering plants always are found inside fruits. A vegetable is the edible part of any particular plant without an ovary,and have roots when pulled out of the ground.

Answer 8

Vegetables are items that have edible leaves,roots and stems. Fruits are items that have edible bits surrounding the seeds. Tomatos cucumbers and melons therefore are fruits. Peas and beans? - not sure about those.

Answer 9

As a general rule, fruit grows above ground and has internal seeds, but vegetables tend to grow underground with no seeds.

Answer 10

fruit has seeds a vegatable doesent so a tomato isa technicaly a fruit