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
Fruit anatomy fleshy fruit, during development, the pericarp and other accessory structures become the fleshy portion of the fruit. The types of fleshy fruits are berries, pomes, and drupes. In berries, the entire pericarp is fleshy but this excludes the exocarp which acts as more as a skin. There are berries that are known as pepo, a type of berry with an inseparable rind, or hesperidium, which has a separable rind. An example of a pepo is the cucumber and a lemon would be an example of a hesperidium. The fleshy portion of the pomes is developed from the floral tube and