Berry (botany) Berry (botany) In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit without a stone produced from a single flower containing one ovary. Berries so defined include grapes, currants, and tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, eggplants (aubergines) and bananas, but exclude certain fruits commonly called berries, such as strawberries and raspberries. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire outer layer of the ovary wall ripens into a potentially edible "pericarp". Berries may be formed from one or more carpels from the same flower (i.e. from a simple or a compound ovary). The seeds are usually
Berry (botany) Some sources have attempted to quantify the difference, e.g. requiring the endocarp to be less than 2 mm thick in a berry. Examples of botanical berries include: "True berries", or "baccae", may also be required to have a thin outer skin, not self-supporting when removed from the berry. This distinguishes, for example, a "Vaccinium" or "Solanum" berry from an "Adansonia" (baobab) amphisarca, which has a dry, more rigid and self-supporting skin. The fruit of citrus, such as the orange, kumquat and lemon, is a berry with a thick rind and a very juicy interior divided into segments by septa, that