"John DeGood" wrote in message
...
Ray wrote:
Can someone tell me what differs between a vegetable and a fruit?

According to:

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/p...finefruit.html

it took the Supreme Court to resolve this question (see below). :-)

Q: What determines if something is a fruit or vegetable?

A: A vegetable is described as "any herbaceous (non-woody) plant or plant
part that is eaten with the main course rather than as a dessert. It
usually has a bland taste."

Botanically the fruit is "the developed ovary of a seed plant with its
contents and accessory parts, as the pea pod, nut, tomato, pineapple,
etc." or " the edible part of a plant developed from a flower with any
accessory tissues, as the peach, mulberry, banana, etc."

The confusion arises because the "vegetable" can have "fruit" which are
the reproductive parts. The tomato is probably the only legally declared
vegetable in a Supreme Court ruling in the early 1900's.

O the joys of multivocal language! Use of "vegetable" to refer to the
entire plant, as well as to those vegetative organs we eat is precisely what
leads to confusion about whether or not the tomato is a vegetable or fruit.

The botanical definition you give for fruit is fine, but the descriptions
given for a vegetable leaves everything to be desired. In fact, the
statement that a vegetable "usually has a bland taste" is just wrong. Many
of the herbs and spices we routinely use in cooking have wonderful flavours,
That should be obvious since we do routinely use them, and it would be
illogical to use them if they contributed nothing to the flavour of the
foods on which they're used. And then there are beets, ginger, parsnips,
onions, garlic, chives, and radishes. Horseradish is so potent that it is
often 'cut' with turnip, and employees of factories producing prepared
horseradish generally require environment suites because the vapours
produced by grinding horseradish is so potent no-one could function in the
immediate area without protection (or so I am told). And we can't forget
spinach or cabbage. There are so many wonderful vegetables, involving use
of vegetative organs of plants that is, that it seems absurd to claim that
vegetables generally have only a bland flavour.

I see you took the definitions from a site maintained by an educational
institution. That makes it all the more troubling that they would offer
such a worthless description of the word 'vegetable'. What is even worse is
that they offer extension services. But I don't see the educational
institution named. If I knew which institution it is, I'd know not to hire
one of their graduates, except maybe to sweep floors and clean bathrooms. I
can't imagine any competent agronomist describing vegetables that way.
Maybe I expect too much of professional scientists?

In very simple terms, fruits are made of those tissues that develop from the
flower, especially the ovaries, and vegetative organs are all the tissues of
the plant except for those included in the fruit. Or, in terms you could
use with children, fruits are those organs of a plant that contain seeds,
and all the rest are vegetative organs. As a theoretical biologist, I can
find plenty of things to argue about related to this definition, but for
practical purposes, or our purposes, this simplistic definition won't lead
us too far astray. You will realize, of course, that ALL flowering plants
have BOTH vegetative organs and fruits!

Does this help?

Cheers,

Ted

--
R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
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