Fruit
Botanically, a fruit is the ripened ovary of a flowering plant, dry or moist and fleshy. When discussing food, the term usually refers to fruits that are sweet and fleshy, especially ones that are not usually consumed by themselves at supper.
Some culinary fruits are not fruits in the botanical sense (e.g., rhubarb; only the stems are edible).
Gourds (e.g. pumpkins), tomatoes, and green peppers are fruits in the botanical sense, but are treated as vegetables in cooking. Some spices, such as allspice and nutmeg are botanically fruits. Some gymnosperms, such as juniper, have fleshy arils that resemble fruits.
Some edible fruits:
- Apple
- Banana
- Berry
- Aronia
- Blueberry
- Bramble fruit
- Cranberry
- Currant
- Elderberry
- Salmonberry
- Gooseberry
- Goumi
- Honeysuckle (The berries of some species are edible: others are poisonous)
- Huckleberry
- Mulberry
- Sea buckthorn
- Strawberry
- Carambola
- Cherimoya
- Cherry
- Citrus
- Date
- Drupe
- Durian
- Fig
- Grape
- Guava
- Kiwifruit
- Lychee
- Mango
- Melon
- Pineapple
- Papaya
- Pawpaw
- Pear
- Persimmon
- Pomegranate
- Quince
- Rambutan
- Star fruit
- Stone fruit
- Tamarind
A nonedible fruit:
See also
I'd love to see a better classification of these fruits--regional, botanical, or both. These are just my North American culinary classifications.
Most of the above are included in a classification of flowering plants, starting at Magnoliophyta. I know it's incomplete and has been growing only slowly, but I'm nowhere close to an expert. Anyway, pages on the above could link back to families like Rosaceae, once those exist.