Fruitful Lies

I had a rather eye-opening pharmacognosy lecture today. Cognosy is basically the study of medicinal plants and of course, botany forms an integral part of this wonderful subject.Normally, this subject is at 8.30 in the morning and well, most of us are half asleep or simply not bothered. Not today. (Okay we were half asleep, but definitely bothered).

We’d discovered, we’d been lied to, betrayed even, by a number of people, all through our lives right from the very minute someone taught us “A for Apple. Apple is a fruit”. IT IS NOT A FRUIT. It’s something called a pome, which is a false fruit. The apple core that we all chuck so carelessly, THAT is the fruit. What we eat is just a swollen receptacle, a fake dressing over the real fruit. Same case with pear.

So what is a fruit?

Anything with seeds, you’d think now. You could not be more wrong. While the whole world went gaga when people discovered that the tomato is not a vegetable but a fruit, botanists were probably smirking. It is probably a conspiracy by the entire botanist community to reveal the harsh truth, one fruit at a time.

Botanist 1: “So the whole world went nuts over tomato being a fruit eh?”

Botanist 2: “Yeah. Let’s announce next that coconuts and peanuts aren’t really nuts.”

(*evil laughter*)

Circumventing back to the question, fruits are the reproductive product of plants (ew, you just ate plant baby) and vegetables are simply, seedless growing parts of the plant- stems, roots, leaves, buds and so on.

Potatoes, onions, spinach- yep these are the good old veggies.

Beans? No. It's a leguminous fruit with seeds. Cucumber? No, again. It is a pepo, a kind of a berry. 

WTF? Since when did kakdi become a berry of all things?

So there you go, a peanut isn't a nut, a water melon isn't a melon and a strawberry isn't even a fruit let alone a berry. strawberries are complex, definitely do not believe what you see. The fruit part of the strawberry are the thin dry things on the surface (what we all call seeds) while the fleshy part is the receptacle (remember apple?).

Did you think it's just vegetables? What we call "spices" are also fruits. Anise, mustard and cardamom are dehiscent capsular fruits. Fennel and cumin (saunf and jeera) are schizocarp fruits. Groundnuts are lomentum schizocarps. Hence by definition, is vaghaar a fruit salad?

Mangoes, peaches and raspberries are the closest to the definition of a fruit. Everything else, they are fibs. Mendacities we have grown with.

I do wonder what will happen though once everyone knows what is a fruit and what isn't? The ramifications can be unnerving, especially if you follow fasts that state "only fruits today". You have been eating wrong all along. 

Why this confusion, di? It's just because botanists are complacent pricks. Ideally, they should clear the confusion in the following generations by teaching kids what exactly is a fruit and what is a vegetable to avoid mix ups when they study botany. (Or not, this botanist conspiracy might change the concept of a fruit cake. One does not want lady's finger in a cake). Physicists and chemists don't bring you up with fabrications all your life and shit on it later. Chemists are wise. Be a chemist.