Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?


To really figure out if a tomato is a fruit or vegetable, you need to know what makes a fruit a fruit, and a vegetable a vegetable. The big question to ask is, DOES IT HAVE SEEDS? If the answer is yes, then technically, (botanically) you have a FRUIT. This, of course, makes your tomato a fruit. It also makes cucumbers, squash, green beans and walnuts all fruits as well. Along with the fruit from a plant or tree, we can often eat the leaves (lettuce,) stems (celery,) roots (carrots,) and flowers (broccoli.) Many of these other parts of the plant are typically referred to as VEGETABLES. Now don't go looking for tomatoes next to the oranges in your grocery stores; fruits like tomatoes and green beans are usually (alas, incorrectly) referred to as "vegetables" in most grocery stores and cookbooks.

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<a href="fruit-1.html">Fruit development<br>
Simple fruit<br>
Aggregate fruit<br>
Multiple fruits<br><br>


Fruit chart<br>
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To summarize common types of fleshy fruit (examples follow in the table below):<br>


    * Berry – simple fruit and seeds created from a single ovary<br>

          o Pepo – Berries where the skin is hardened, like cucurbits<br>

          o Hesperidium – Berries with a rind and a juicy interior, like most citrus fruit<br>

    * Compound fruit, which includes:<br>

          o Aggregate fruit – with seeds from different ovaries of a single flower<br>

          o Multiple fruit – fruits of separate flowers, merged or packed closely together<br>

    * Accessory fruit – where some or all of the edible part is not generated by the ovary



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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit