why do plants have fruits?

Question

i mean why does that plant waste so much of its resources to produce fruit, and why doesnt it directly produce seeds like in grains for reproduction.
like an apple contains just few seeds for which the plant manufactures the whole apple. why so?

if its for distribution then, what about fruits or vegetables with bitter or uneatble taste like bitter guard or neem have fruit.

Answer 1

Because that is the way God made them!

Answer 2

a plant makes fruit to ensure its dispersal. this dispersal guarantees that the young trees do not grow too close to the parent and compete with it for nutrients. This is a small sacrifice to pay, when you consider the alternative, i.e., the saplings that are close enough can remove so much nutrients from the parent tree that it ends up dying.
The fruits offer an enticing meal to other organisms, which take a while to eat them. Thus carrying them far enough away from the parent tree.
Some plants have evolved their fruits to make sure that another living thing processes it before it germinates. So some seeds have to pass through the digestive tract of some animals before it will sprout. This, again, ensures that the seed is far enough away to reduce competition.

Answer 3

Animal eat the fruit, walk some distance, then release the seeds along with some fertilizer. The strategy works to distribute seeds in a wide area. The number of seeds per apple reflects the optimum for survival. Remember, on average, each apple tree only needs to produce only one apple tree during its lifetime to keep a steady population.

Answer 4

Well, plants do use their fruit for dispersal, but an important thing to note is that most modern day fruit was bred for the fruit, not the seeds. Modern day apples are very different from their ancestors and have a lot more fleshy fruit, and so a larger energetic investment into the fruit part.

As you mentioned, having a larger fruit/grain etc., doesn't really make sense as far as the plant wasting so much of its resources. It does make sense if you realize that humans bred them that way for that fruit/grain.

Answer 5

Generally it is for dispersal. Whether it be biotic or abiotic dispersal vectors, fruits and dispersers are usually well adapted to disperse. Note that not all animals have the same aversion to certain chemicals as well. Capsicum (found in peppers and makes them spicy) burns the crap out of mammals, yet the animals that typically disperse them (birds) lack the receptors to feel the burn. With this in mind, just because something is bitter or tastes bad to humans really means very little in the grand scheme of things.

Plants also produce fruits to prevent the seeds from germinating before they are ready. Some seeds will lie dormant for years, stuck in the fruit.

Answer 6

Plants have fruits to attract herbivores to the area that will also eat the whole plant when they're done with the fruit. So that doesn't make much sense does it? That's the way the ball bounces in that case. Poisonous fruits are to limit the number of herbivores that eat the fruit so that instead of one bear eating all the fruit and spread all its seeds in one place, numerous animals have eaten one seed each and dispersed the seeds far better and slowly over the whole growing season, not all in one sitting.

Answer 7

Plants have fruits to reproduce. The fruit is the ovary of the plant and carries the seeds. Fertilization occurs in the flower, then the fuit develops.