Strawberries are the fruit we wish we could always afford. People go mad for these babies, in all its forms: cocktails, soju, soft-serve, and literally as every other dessert available. But what most people don't know, strawberry enthusiasts included, is that this particular fruit isn't actually a berry.
Excuse us while we get all scientific up in here. For a fruit to be considered a berry, it has to come from one flower with *one* ovary.
Blueberries, for example, meet this criterion. What might be surprising is that pomegranates, kiwis, tomatoes, and even bananas are also considered berries. It's easy to forget that bananas have seeds because they're so small.
Strawberries and raspberries, on the other hand, come from flowers with more than one ovary, which makes them an aggregate fruit. Judy Jernstedt, a professor of plant sciences, breaks it down even further, "Raspberries have those little subunits," Jernstedt said. "Each one of those little subunits comes from an individual ovary. And those subunits are actually [called] drupes." Strawberries differ because instead of having a lot of drupes, it has multiple achenes (the tiny yellow dots on its surface).
Who knew, right?
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