Eggplant Eggplant Eggplant (US), aubergine (UK), or brinjal (South Asia and South Africa ) is a plant species in the nightshade family Solanaceae, "Solanum melongena", grown for its often purple edible fruit. The spongy, absorbent fruit of the plant is widely used in cooking in many different cuisines, and is often considered a vegetable, even though it is a berry by botanical definition. As a member of the genus "Solanum", it is related to the tomato and the potato. Like the tomato, its skin and seeds can be eaten, but, like the potato, it is not advisable to eat it raw.
Berry (botany) ') was originally used for "any small round fruit". Andrea Caesalpinus (1519–1603) classified plants into trees and herbs, further dividing them by properties of their flowers and fruit. He did not make the modern distinction between "fruits" and "seeds", calling hard structures like nuts ' or seeds. A fleshy fruit was called a '. For Caesalpinus, a true ' or berry was a ' derived from a flower with a superior ovary; one derived from a flower with an inferior ovary was called a '. In 1751, Carl Linnaeus wrote "Philosophia Botanica", considered to be the first textbook of descriptive