Botany Bites: When a Banana Is a Berry and a Strawberry Isn’t a Fruit

Botanical definitions confound kitchen logic:

• Berry: Fleshy fruit from a single ovary with seeds embedded in pulp. Bananas, grapes, tomatoes, and apples qualify.
• Fruit (broad): Any plant product useful to humans—includes pecans, corn, cotton.
• Fruit (culinary): Juicy, seed-bearing structures—melons, peaches, blueberries. Strawberries fail because seeds are on the outside.
• Vegetable (botanical): Any edible plant part—makes wheat and pineapple vegetables.
• Vegetable (culinary): Edible non-fruit, non-seed parts—sweet potatoes, spinach. Excludes squash, beans, peas.

Share these paradoxes at dinner—if you dare.