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Berry Club (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by Facelikeapotato@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] elxeno@lemm.ee 63 points 1 year ago

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

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[-] somnuz@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

You mean Scaleberry?

[-] applebusch@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Lookorex@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[-] AlphaAutist@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago

They hated tomato for he spoke the truth

[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I see two comments :P

[-] moog@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Shady_Shiroe@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago

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

[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[-] Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago
[-] Hupf@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

The worst kind of correct.

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago
[-] Klear@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago
[-] sirico@feddit.uk 14 points 1 year ago

Unlike peanuts which are legumes

[-] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Said the strawberry

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago
[-] Blastasaurus@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

The most forbidden Vodka...

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 5 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Here's the thing...

[-] brennesel@feddit.de 2 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[-] Username@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago
[-] craftyindividual@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

But not peanuts, they're actually legumes :(

[-] ComradeR@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I'm eating a legume right now! Cool!

[-] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago

Old comic but still one of my all time favorites

[-] simon_creek@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wow... my life was a lie

[-] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

What is a "berry" in fact?

[-] McInTyre007@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago
[-] build_a_bear_group@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

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

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

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

[-] darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] newIdentity@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

There are multiple definitions for berry

this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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