1521
Berry Club (lemmy.ml)
submitted 11 months ago by Facelikeapotato@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] elxeno@lemm.ee 63 points 11 months ago

Is banana a berry or is it there just for scale?

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 63 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

yup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_(botany)

a berry is a fleshy fruit without a stone (pit) 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 that meet the culinary definition of berries, such as strawberries and raspberries.

[-] Comment105@lemm.ee 87 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Botany should not have borrowed the word berry.

I am of the opinion that "a small, sweet, edible fruit" is closer to the right definition for the word, and that botanists' decision to appropriate the word for a redefined purpose was inappropriate and unnecessary.

[-] phar@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

When did this all occur? Was berry a word for things like strawberries before and then it was chosen by botanists to meet another definition?

[-] ophy@lemmy.nz 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Linguist here, if I may share my 2¢.

We do know that even over a thousand years ago, speakers of Old English were still calling these kinds of fruits berries, such as strawberries and blackberries (although pronunciation differed somewhat, of course). A word for strawberry as "earth berry" is even reconstructed for the proto Germanic language around 1500 to 2500 years ago. Beyond that, it becomes difficult to trace the word berry any further.

The Botanical sense of the word berry seems to come largely from at earliest the 1500s, from the writings of Caesalpinus, although the definitions were inconsistent and later writings on the matter constantly redefined things and added new terms. Although, largely, these writings all used Latinate terms for their botanical concepts, such as bacca (the closest to the modern botanical berry), and also words like pomum (pome/pomme), drupe, etc. for the other categories of fruit.

So, somewhere since all of that, some English-speaking botanist decided it would be a good idea to use the word berry to describe this concept of a bacca (even though berries had been used for distinctly different things from what that concept described), and now we end up in our current silly predicament where strawberries aren't berries but pumpkins are.

I'd propose we call botanical berries "bayes" or "bayfruit", the word bay/baye being an alternate word for berry that ultimately derived from the Latin word bacca, via Old French.

[-] cjsolx@beehaw.org 7 points 11 months ago

Sounds to me like we need a new definition for berry.

[-] somnuz@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago

You mean Scaleberry?

[-] applebusch@lemmy.world 49 points 11 months ago

That's ok accessory fruit club is pretty cool. I always preferred drupe club though.

[-] KreekyBonez@lemm.ee 22 points 11 months ago
[-] SuperIce@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Droop snoot

[-] Lookorex@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

First rule of accessory fruit club is, you do not talk about accessory fruit club. Second rule of accessory fruit club is, you DO NOT TALK ABOUT ACCESSORY FRUIT CLUB.

[-] earned_myself_a_gin@reddthat.com 37 points 11 months ago

Why are there no comments on this! It's hilarious

[-] AlphaAutist@lemmy.world 47 points 11 months ago

They hated tomato for he spoke the truth

[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

I see two comments :P

[-] moog@lemm.ee 26 points 11 months ago

okay but whats with the bulge in the paper on panel 3....

[-] Shady_Shiroe@lemm.ee 29 points 11 months ago

I think that's the top part of the paper bent backwards a bit casting a shadow

[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[-] Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago
[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago
[-] Hupf@feddit.de 8 points 11 months ago

The worst kind of correct.

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 7 points 11 months ago
[-] Klear@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago
[-] sirico@feddit.uk 14 points 11 months ago

Unlike peanuts which are legumes

[-] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago

Said the strawberry

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The taxonomy in biology can be really confusing. Potatoes (only their fruits), peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, avocados, lemons, oranges, kiwifruit and papayas are also in the berry club.

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 23 points 11 months ago

Potatoes are tubers, I don't think they fit the botanical definition of a fruit. They contain no seeds, for example.

The rest are though. Pumpkins was the one that always blew my mind.

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 11 months ago
[-] Blastasaurus@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

The most forbidden Vodka...

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 5 points 11 months ago

You are correct, but the potato plant bears potato fruits, which are classified as berries. I will clarify that in my comment.

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 7 points 11 months ago

I hope you mean the taxonomy in botany, things are much clearer on the zoological side

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Here's the thing...

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 2 points 11 months ago

Well, I'm not a biologist and even all my houseplants are constantly dying. For me, biology as a whole is confusing.

[-] wild@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

I heard the seeds on the outside of the strawberry are berries.

[-] Username@feddit.de 8 points 11 months ago
[-] craftyindividual@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

But not peanuts, they're actually legumes :(

[-] ComradeR@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

I'm eating a legume right now! Cool!

[-] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I wonder if they'd consider Chuck eligible, though. He was undeniably a human but also a Berry.

TIL banana is a berry! 🤯

[-] MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Old comic but still one of my all time favorites

[-] simon_creek@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Wow... my life was a lie

[-] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago

What is a "berry" in fact?

[-] build_a_bear_group@hexbear.net 3 points 11 months ago

would bananas being seedless mean that they are also not berries?

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 18 points 11 months ago

Bananas have seeds. We've just bred them for hundreds of generations so the seeds are small and so soft you don't even notice them.

[-] justastranger@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 months ago

Bananas have seeds, they're just incredibly degenerated in commercial bananas. Next time you have one, break off a chunk and count the black specks inside. Each one would've been a seed if not for generations of human intervention.

[-] DakRalter@thelemmy.club 3 points 11 months ago

Here's a website with a picture of a banana with seeds

https://sciencemeetsfood.org/rise-fall-bananas/

[-] McInTyre007@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago
[-] darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

The definition of a berry doesn't make sense then.

[-] newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

There are multiple definitions for berry

this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
1521 points (98.8% liked)

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