Berry (botany) in fruit type may have led to the evolution of fruit eating in mammals and birds. Fruit type has been considered to be a useful character in classification and in understanding the phylogeny of plants. The evolution of fruits with a berry-like pericarp has been studied in a wide range of flowering plant families. Repeated transitions between fleshy and dry pericarps have been demonstrated regularly. One well-studied family is the Solanaceae, because of the commercial importance of fruit such as tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplants or aubergines. Capsules, which are dry dehiscent fruits, appear to be the original form of
Berry (botany) systematic botany. He used eight different terms for fruits, one of which was ' or berry, distinguished from other types of fruit such as ' (drupe) and ' (pome). A ' was defined as "'", meaning "unvalved solid pericarp, containing otherwise naked seeds". The adjective "'" here has the sense of "solid with tissue softer than the outside; stuffed". A berry or ' was distinguished from a drupe and a pome, both of which also had an unvalved solid pericarp; a drupe also contained a nut (') and a pome a capsule ('), rather than the berry's naked seeds. Linnaeus'