MONKEY D. BOOTS

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I had originally posted this article on Substack, if you want to check it out on there feel free to use this link! Happy Readings!

https://open.substack.com/pub/monkeydboots/p/the-curious-case-of-the-banana?r=876dcx&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

The curious case of the Banana 

Whilst taking my daily scroll through the internet, I came across this article that caught my eye. “Why are bananas berries but strawberries aren't?” written by Laura Greggel and published by lifescience.com. In my head I was like “What is this girl talking about?” but as I read through it, it pushed me down a rabbit hole of discoveries and newfound knowledge that I never knew would interest me so deeply before. What I learned destroyed what I knew about plants and has inspired me to look deeper into foods and what is considered what. Join me today as I discuss how I found out why Bananas are berries and Strawberries are frauds. 

What is a berry? 

The basic structure of a fruit consists of 3 major parts or layers. The Exocarp or Outer Layer of the fruit is where the skin, rind, or peel of the fruit protects the inside of the fruit where the seed(s) resides. Right beyond the Exocarp is the Mesocarp which is the flesh of the fruit and what we mostly eat and commonly consider the edible parts of the fruit. The last layer or part of the fruit that bulbs up its basic structure is the Endocarp, which contains the seeds and ensures that they are safe from any external danger. The 3 layers (known as the pericorp of a fruit) are the basic anatomical structure that most fruits are created by and viewing deeper into the anatomical structure and growth of fruits we can see differences between plants and their categorizations. Taking a deeper look into what gets looked at to categorize fruits into their different classifications, we can see exactly why the Banana is categorized as a berry while a Strawberry isn’t. 

 A berry consists of the 3 layers of the pericarp, however what makes a berry a berry is how it grows and how many seeds they have. Typically, a berry is grown from one flower and has one ovary. This is what most classification of berries derives from and is why fruits you would have never linked to being a berry are in fact berries. Take the banana for example, grown not from a tree but from the largest herbaceous plant whose leaves overlap with each other creating a large pseudo stem. A flower sprouts from the pseudo stem and unfolds into individual hands that will then be the banana fruit. The Banana is a textbook example of what a berry is anatomically. It comes from one flower, has one ovary, is composed of the pericarp structure, and harbors multiple seeds. Comparing that to the anatomical structure to a strawberry, it becomes clear to see that a strawberry is far from any true berry. 

A strawberry is a perennial plant that sprouts a flower that has multiple ovaries that sits in the middle of the flower. As the receptacle of the strawberry enlarges, the individual ovaries develop into the seed of the actual fruit of the strawberry which is known as the Achene. The Achene is the fruit of the strawberry, and the red flesh that is sweet and juicy is actually the receptacle of the strawberry that's swollen and meant to hold all the ovaries/Achene. Looking at it anatomically, strawberries do come from one flower but have more than one ovary and the actual fruit of the strawberry online has one seed that resides in it, making a strawberry not a berry. Strawberries are a part of a different classification of fruits known as Aggregate Accessories. These are where other named berries like raspberry and blackberry are classified. After comparing what we see with the strawberry and banana, naming something a berry doesn’t make it a berry, but rather what structure and anatomy of the plant itself is what constitutes what a berry is, though that doesn’t mean that there aren’t berry adjacent thighs and subsets of berries. 

Drupes and Subsets of Berries 

After looking deeper into what makes up the checklist for a berry, which fruits check all the boxes, and which are pretending? Searching through the anatomy of fruits and doing further research into berries, I learned that many different fruits that I never would’ve lumped into being anything close to a berry was way closer to what a berry actually is than a strawberry, and conversely things I always saw as berries weren’t berries at all. Drupes were my first encounter with non-berry fruits. Drupes share commonality with berries, having 3 distinct layers, however; Drupes' endocarps are different from their berry counterparts. Typically derived from one single seeded ovary, the endocarp is larger and wood like in texture. This distinction is why drupes (Like Peaches, Cherries, Olives, Apricots, etc.) are also called Stone fruits. The Achene or the fruit of the strawberry and other members of the aggregate fruits (Blackberry, Raspberry, Dewberry, Etc.) are a part of this classification of fruit and are known as drupelets. Something I learned about that surprised me is that an Avocado, despite fitting the role of a Drupe, is a berry. The reason why is actually because the endocarp is thinner than what a typical drupe endocarp would be, it's not woody in texture instead being more papery, and the whole of what's inside the endocarp is the seed, therefore making it a fruit and not a drupe which I found very intriguing. This got me thinking about what other fruits are berries and what I learned shocked me. 

I learned that with the standard berry there are two subsets or subspecies of berries. The first of these subsets are called Hesperidiums. Hesperidiums follow a similar structure to berries with a leathery exocarp with pits that hold oils within them (The exocarp is also referred to as the peel). The ovary wall becomes a thick spongy rind that is bitter with the mesocarp flesh being very juicy and sour. Seeds are spread throughout the mesocarp and are held in a thin, slimy endocarp. Hesperidiums are Citrus fruits. Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Grapefruit, Currents, and many more citrus fruits are a subspecies of berries, and this blew my mind when I found this out. But that's not all. The second subspecies of Berries are known as Pepos. These berries typically are large fruits with hard and thick rind, juicy, water filled mesocarps with seed typically clustered within the middle of the fruit in a slimy endocarp. This is where the Cucurbitaceae or the Gourd Family of plants are classified. Watermelons, Cucumbers, Cantaloupes, Pumpkins, Squash, Zucchinis are all berries under the met criteria. All this research and findings led me back to the first discovery I had which brought me down the fruity rabbit hole in the first place. 

What I've learned 

The anatomy of a Berry consists of the pericarps (Exocarp, Mesocarp, Endocarp) that make up the layers of the fruit which is derived from one flower and one ovary. This differs from the anatomy of Drupes which are derived from multiple ovaries and have a hard and woody endocarp. The subspecies, Hesperidium and Pepo, share a similar structure as a standard berry, but have textural differences that distinguishes them from the typical berry. Bananas are a great example of the typical berry bunching from a single flower and have its own distinct ovary with a peel like exocarp, a fleshy yellow mesocarp, and a thin slimy endocarp, while a strawberry is a great example of a drupe starting on a single flower that has multiple ovaries attached to it and the tip of the strawberry (or the receptacle) swelling to a sweet and juicy red flesh and the ovaries walls forming the fruit (The Achene) that houses the seed inside it. Even though it carries the namesake of berry, a strawberry is far from a berry, much farther than the superior banana.  

Conclusion and Citation