From Trees to Fruits & Veggies

This week I had planned to write about mangrove trees.

We'd been to see the manatees, those huge seal-like mammals that were supposedly mistaken for mermaids by sailors who'd obviously been out to sea much too long. After you've seen live manatees, you really have to wonder about sailors' imaginations or deliriums. Anyway, there are lots of mangrove trees alongside the walkways and creeks and the estuary at the manatee center here in Riverview. I even took photos of some of the mangroves. (The manatees were mainly staying underwater, only coming up to take in a snortful of air about once every five minutes.)

Now that I've piqued your interest, I'll do a brief but about mangroves. Wikipedia states (and I quote): "A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30*N and 30*S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5* of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared in the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago." Boring verbiage, but the plants are fascinating to see.

So, not wanting to delve deeper into the jungle of information on mangroves (see what I did there?), I'm going back to expand a bit on last weeks' column telling you more than you probably wanted to know about drupes. After I'd sent in last weeks' offering, the part about synonyms for drupe including "pome" kept reoccurring in my thoughts. I wondered if pomegranates are drupes. Short answer is no.

A pome is a fleshy fruit consisting of a central core that contains seeds (usually five). That core is encased in a thick, fleshy layer, under a thin tougher skin. The seeds themselves are leathery, which definitely leaves out pomegranates as they have tons of seeds, each inside a pip. Pomes include apples, pears, and quince (we don't get those regularly up here, if at all).

So now I'm wondering who named the pomegranate and why the name starts with pome? That person was Carolus Linnaeus, who named it in 1753. He combined a couple of Latin words. The first part means apple from Carthage (no, I didn't look up why he thought it was an apple, and why Carthage came into it). The second part just means with seeds.

The pomegranate is actually technically another berry, but with a leathery skin. The trees that produce these berries are native to Africa and the Near East. They became symbols of fertility. The French call them grenades since those fruits were thrown on the floors of honeymoon suites (to wish robust fertility upon the new couple), where they burst open, spewing the pips rather than shrapnel. (I'm glad I don't have to clean up that mess.)

Pome research brought me to the terms pepo, hesperidium, aggregate fruit, and multiple fruit. My head is spinning.

Pepo is also a fleshy fruit with many seeds and a tough rind. They form from a single flower. Examples are cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons. These are also berries. Don't ask me why we don't just call them berries, but add pepo as a descriptor. Science likes to be very specific.

The hesperidium is also a leathery-skinned berry where the peel contains oil glands in pits. The insides are sectioned off, each section containing little fluid-filled sacs. These sacs are actually hair cells that are specialized. The oils are essential oils. Hesperidiums include lemons and oranges. I had no idea they were berries and that I really enjoy eating hair and putting hair in my morning tea!

Aggregate fruits were touched on last week when I talked about strawberries. You remember about the ovaries, right? Besides strawberries, there's also the thimbleberry, which looks like a miniature raspberry. I guess it has tasty flesh around its miniature ovaries, too.

I thought multiple fruits were what I usually brought home from the grocers. Apparently there's a whole separate scientific category for these. They're clustered drupelets, but each drupelet forms from a separate flower, and each has a separate style that looks like a black hair. More yumminess, huh? The site I looked at said the black mulberry is a multiple fruit.

So, in conclusion, we've learned that many fruits that I'd just considered fruits are actually berries. And fruits I considered berries are drupes or aggregate fruits. . Things I'd considered vegetables are really fruit. Squash, pumpkins, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, avocados, and olives are fruit because they have seeds. So include green beans, corn, avocados, and okra as fruit, again, because seeds are in them. Rhubarb is used like a fruit, but is a vegetable (no seeds in the part we eat). Did you know watermelon is the official state vegetable of Oklahoma? Bananas are a berry.

I'm giving up and going back to the generalized terms fruits and vegetables. I'll bet you are, as well.