Most of us have heard this by now.
Bananas are technically berries.
Strawberries are not berries.
But whenever I read this little fact, I have to think: How can this possibly make sense?
Well. It is a science thing. It all comes down to how botanists classify fruit.
Before we go any further, I wanted to know who these people are who say a banana is a berry. So I looked. They are smart for one thing. Very smart. And a bit rare.
There are probably around 15,000 to 20,000 professional botanists and plant scientists in the United States. That’s only about one botanist for every 17,000 to 22,000 Americans, making it a surprisingly small profession.
Botanists study far more than flowers. They investigate trees and all the plant life.
There are an estimated 390,000 known species of plants on Earth, and scientists discover about 2,000 new plant species every year.
It takes years of education to become a botanist. At the very least, they have a bachelor’s degree in the botanical sciences.
Anyway, back to those bananas and strawberries.
The botanists’ definitions are based on the way a fruit develops from a flower, not on how it tastes or what it looks like.
In botanical terms, a true berry develops from a single flower with one ovary. As that ovary grows, it forms the entire fruit. Bananas fit that description perfectly. So do grapes, blueberries, tomatoes, kiwis, avocados, eggplants, and even peppers. All true berries.
Strawberries, on the other hand, develop from a single flower that contains many tiny ovaries instead of just one. Each ovary becomes one of those little seed-like specks on the outside of the strawberry. Because the fruit is formed from many ovaries working together, botanists call it an aggregate fruit, not a berry.
Raspberries and blackberries also aren’t true berries. Like strawberries, they are aggregate fruits because they develop from many ovaries in one flower.
Watermelons, however, are berries. They’re a special type of berry called a pepo, which simply means they have a thick rind. Pumpkins, cucumbers, and squash belong to that same botanical family.
The shocking thing to me about all of this? That plants have ovaries. As it turns out, only flowering plants have ovaries.
About 80% of all living plant species are flowering plants. There are roughly 300,000–350,000 known species of flowering plants, making them by far the largest group in the plant kingdom.
So while not all plants have ovaries, most of the plants we see every day do. We are talking about everything from the grass beneath our feet to the trees in our forests. And all the way to the fruits and vegetables in our kitchens.
Science. It is smart. It is real. It explains our world. It makes our lives possible.
And we must remember that science has its own language that many of us do not understand. Just because we don’t understand any other language, like German or French, the language is still very real and necessary.
It is smart.
And. It’s not bananas.
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“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” — Immanuel Kant
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“Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again.” — Robert Frost
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“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” — Aristotle
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“Science is simply common sense at its best.” — Thomas Huxley
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