What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.
(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)

Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

Ultimately I'd like to have several widely-familiar examples
of each. I haven't been able to find much info about the taste
of parts of plants not normally eaten. :-)

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.
..

Jeff Root schreef
What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not?

+ + +
Mostly sugar? Also color, smell and taste. The substances responsible for
the last two are only very subtly different.
+ + +

For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.
(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)

Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

+ + +
cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc
+ + +

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

+ + +
98% of all fruits? Laziness?
+ + +

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

+ + +
Acorns. Although the fruits are used the trees are not cultivated for this.
+ + +

Ultimately I'd like to have several widely-familiar examples
of each. I haven't been able to find much info about the taste
of parts of plants not normally eaten. :-)

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.

Could you give me examples of:
Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

P van Rijckevorsel schreef
cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc

+ + +
And, strictly speaking: apples and pears, strawberries and raspberries,
figs, etc
PvR

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not. BRBR

It's an oversimplification, but the most obvious difference is the presence of
sugar.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Could you give me examples of: Parts of plants which taste fruity, but
are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

+ + +
cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc BRBR

Juniper and yew berries are fruits. They are called cones, but they contain
seeds if they are fertilized.

The fruity part of a strawberry is an achene. The actual fruits are those
little things all over the outside which contain the seeds. The edible part of
a pineapple is also a holder. Our modern pineapples are seedless. Not sure
which part you would call a fruit.
One notable example is the Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia dulcis. The fruits
don't amount to much, but when they ripen, the fruiting twigs become soft,
tasty, & edible.
Nature is varied and ingenious. Fruits evolve and are further cultivated to
enhance the reproductive ability of the plant. Any part of a plant may become a
storage organ to tide the plant over the winter or the dry season. This can be
leaves, stems, sap, or roots. If they are used to store sugar, people (and
animals) may find them tasty, and possibly fruity.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Could you give me examples of: Parts of plants which taste fruity,
but are not fruits. (The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

+ + +
cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc BRBR

Iris Cohen schreef
Juniper and yew berries are fruits. They are called cones, but they
contain seeds if they are fertilized.

+ + +
They are not fruits (botanically speaking). The berry of yew is an aril, a
later outgrowth. I am a little unsure what a juniperberry is but I would
suppose a cone is as good as anything I can come up with at short notice.
+ + +

The fruity part of a strawberry is an achene. The actual fruits are those
little things all over the outside which contain the seeds. The edible
part of a pineapple is also a holder. Our modern pineapples are seedless.
Not sure which part you would call a fruit.
One notable example is the Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia dulcis. The
fruits don't amount to much, but when they ripen, the fruiting twigs become
soft, tasty, & edible.

+ + +
As in Cashew you mean?
+ + +

Nature is varied and ingenious. Fruits evolve and are further cultivated
to enhance the reproductive ability of the plant. Any part of a plant may
become a storage organ to tide the plant over the winter or the dry season.
This can be leaves, stems, sap, or roots. If they are used to store sugar,
people (and animals) may find them tasty, and possibly fruity.
Iris,

+ + +
Well enough, although for a fruity smell and taste some other substances are
involved, in small quantities but with a big impact.

Who knows what people will come up with. They made "meat" from soja and
fungi, so making fruits out of green or white plant parts would not be
unexpected.
PvR

In article , P van
Rijckevorsel writes
They are not fruits (botanically speaking). The berry of yew is an aril, a
later outgrowth. I am a little unsure what a juniperberry is but I would
suppose a cone is as good as anything I can come up with at short notice.

Stace says "female cones berry-like, with succulent +/- fused cone
scales"
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

Stewart Robert Hinsley schreef
Stace says "female cones berry-like, with succulent +/- fused cone
scales"
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

+ + +
Yes, I had looked it up in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Trees, which says:
"the female cones consist of three to eight fleshy, pointed scales which
coalesce and finally form a more or less globular body or 'berry'."

I always feel uneasy when dealing with such highly technical matters. I will
be interested to see what Farjon comes up with when the Big Book on Conifers
appears (next year?).
PvR

In article ,
[Iris Cohen] wrote...

Could you give me examples of: Parts of plants which taste fruity, but
are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

+ + +
cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc BRBR

Juniper and yew berries are fruits. They are called cones, but they contain
seeds if they are fertilized.

But these are not "true fruits" to a botanist, since they are
not developed from the ovaries of angiosperm flowers. Juniper
berries are fleshy cones not all that modified from the harder
cones of their cypress relatives; yew berries are arils, fleshy
outgrowths of the seed.

The fruity part of a strawberry is an achene. The actual fruits are those
little things all over the outside which contain the seeds. The edible part of
a pineapple is also a holder. Our modern pineapples are seedless. Not sure
which part you would call a fruit.
One notable example is the Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia dulcis. The fruits
don't amount to much, but when they ripen, the fruiting twigs become soft,
tasty, & edible.

Fleshy, edible inflorescence branches? I'd not heard of this
example. Thanks!

Neat:

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/raisintree.html

[reportedly the true fruit is a drupe, not a "pod"]

http://www.edible.co.nz/hovenia/hovenia.htm

[snip]

cheers

In article ,
[Jeff Root] wrote...

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.

But those things that "do not" really don't always taste like one
another either, and your "fruity" fruits seem to have a lot
of different distinctive tastes and may share little other than
sugary sweetness.

There are edible fruits that are pretty different
from the sweet juicy flesh of the "fruity" fruits you have in
mind [e.g., avocados, plantains, eggplant]

(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)

Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

Many "fruits" are actually not strict botanical fruits [= the
further developed and ripened products of the ovaries of flowering
plants]. The small "seeds" on a strawberry are the true fruits
[achenes] of the plant; the fleshy red stuff is part of the
receptacle of the flower. A rose hip similarly isn't a fruit, but
the hard seedlike structures on the inside are the true fruits.

A fig also isn't a true fruit, but is a hollow fleshy inflorescence
[flowering stalk] with the many small seedlike true fruits from
many separate small flowers on the inside. There are also fleshy
"fruits" derived from flower stalks [cashew apples _Anacardium_];
fruits where the fleshy bits are the sepals of the flower, not
the ovaries; fruits where all the fleshy edible stuff is from
special structures [arils] attached to the seeds, and not part
of the ovary wall. Etc.

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

Most plants with fleshy edible fruits aren't cultivated. Many
may potentially be suitable for such use, but haven't been
adopted and selected for use by human growers. Why? Because
very few people seem dedicated to trying to domesticate entirely
new crops from wild plants?

Our domesticated fruit species are often rather modified from
their wild ancestors. Most may just be larger-fruited and perhaps
heavier-bearing, but there are examples like bananas [the
domesticated edible forms are seedless; the wild banana species
are nearly inedible, the flesh being filled with large hard seeds]

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

Why just this combination of traits? There are non-"fruity"
fruits that are still cultivated for food. And even some food
plants that aren't cultivated.

Ultimately I'd like to have several widely-familiar examples
of each.

Is this perhaps for a class assignment? If so, perhaps it would
be better to help you learn to find your own examples.

For example, try

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

and try putting varying combinations of key words such as
"fruits", "domestication", "receptacle", "ovary", "flower"
into the "with all of the words" box. You'll get a lot of
likely "hits", like I just did:

http://www.life.uiuc.edu/plantbio/263/TEMFRUIT.html
http://www.nslc.wustl.edu/courses/Bi...003/fruits.pdf
http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/fruits/intro.htm
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/studyguide...p15/b1515701.a
sp
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/Wilson/pp/f97/fruits.htm
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/Wilso...u98/fruits.htm
http://www.dfsc.dk/pdf/Publications/TN59.pdf
http://www.steve.gb.com/vegetable_em...t_you_eat.html
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/fruitid6.htm

Searching

http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/adv

for 'fruit and flavors and chemistry and sugars and
ripening' also seemed to find a bit.

I haven't been able to find much info about the taste
of parts of plants not normally eaten. :-)

Experimenting yourself on some species may be ill-advised.

cheers

In article ,
(Iris Cohen) writes:
| Could you give me examples of: Parts of plants which taste fruity, but
| are not fruits.
| (The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)
|
| + + +
| cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc BRBR
|
| Juniper and yew berries are fruits. They are called cones, but they contain
| seeds if they are fertilized.
|
| The fruity part of a strawberry is an achene. The actual fruits are those
| little things all over the outside which contain the seeds. The edible part of
| a pineapple is also a holder. Our modern pineapples are seedless. Not sure
| which part you would call a fruit.
| One notable example is the Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia dulcis. The fruits
| don't amount to much, but when they ripen, the fruiting twigs become soft,
| tasty, & edible.
| Nature is varied and ingenious. Fruits evolve and are further cultivated to
| enhance the reproductive ability of the plant. Any part of a plant may become a
| storage organ to tide the plant over the winter or the dry season. This can be
| leaves, stems, sap, or roots. If they are used to store sugar, people (and
| animals) may find them tasty, and possibly fruity.
| Iris,

When I make fruit salad I put in diced jicama. Does that make it a root fruit?

P van Rijckevorsel replied to Jeff Root:

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not?

Mostly sugar? Also color, smell and taste. The substances
responsible for the last two are only very subtly different.

I'm marginally aware of the complex relationship between the
senses of smell and taste, and considered mentioning it in my
first post, but left it out for simplicity. My understanding
is that the sense of taste is limited to sweet, sour, bitter,
and salty, while the sense of smell seems to be unlimited.
So I'm pretty sure that it is really fruity odors that I'm
asking about, when I ask about fruity "taste".

I strongly doubt that sugar (sweet) is the main determinant of
whether something tastes fruity. This is an assertion I've seen
before, though, and I don't understand why.

Adding sugar to tomatoes, cucumbers, or squash doesn't make
them taste fruity. I've had many fruits that tasted fruity
without tasting sweet (although I have no idea of the actual
sugar content), and fruits which normally taste fruity which
had noticeable natural sweetness but equally noticeable lack
of their normal fruity taste.

Color is surely irrelevant.

For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.
(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)
Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc

I never heard of the cashew "fruit" before, and a search turned
up only a single web page which tells about it. It appears that
the cashew fruit is part of a strategy by the cashew tree to get
animals to eat the tasty flower stalk and throw away the nut
encased in its hard shell protected by caustic oil.

Juniper berries sound familiar, but it is a long time since I
last looked at a juniper plant up close. Without a photo, it
is hard to imagine how a cone can look like a berry. Apparently
the berry is used mainly for its fragrance in cosmetics, but is
also sometimes used as a spice. As far as I can tell, the
juniper berry serves the same purpose as a fruit, so I would
think that the most reasonable way to classify it would be to
say that it *is* a fruit. Like birds have wings, and bats have
wings-- they're both wings even if they evolved independantly.

This description was given of juniper berry oil: "It's pungent,
herbaceous, pepery odor is pine-like and comphoric." Since they
misspelled "peppery", I'm guessing that "comphoric" should have
been "camphoric". That doesn't sound exactly "fruity", but may
be somewhat close.

The only info I found on yew berries is that the fleshy covering
of the berry is the only part of the tree that isn't poisonous.

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

98% of all fruits? Laziness?

That seems unlikely. Everything goes into somebody's mouth at
some time or other, especially when famine hits. If it turns
out to taste any good, someone will try to make money off of it.

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

Acorns. Although the fruits are used the trees are not cultivated
for this.

Are you saying that nobody plants oak trees with the intention
of eventually harvesting acorns from them?

Could you give me examples of:
Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc

And, strictly speaking: apples and pears, strawberries and
raspberries, figs, etc

The description of "fruit" that I'm using is:

An ovary of a plant, containing the seed or seeds,
together with its envelope and any closely-connected parts.

Although I'm asking these questions in a botany newsgroup, I'm
writing mainly for people who are familiar with fruits they find
in grocery stores, and will likely never go far beyond that.
If it looks like a fruit, smells like a fruit, tastes like a
fruit, and is in the fruit section of the produce department,
they will say that it probably *is* a fruit.

Thank you! This is more work than I wanted, but progress!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.
..

Iris Cohen replied to Jeff Root:

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.

It's an oversimplification, but the most obvious difference is the
presence of sugar.

As I said to "PvR", I strongly doubt that. It doesn't fit my
experience at all. Many things are sugary without being fruity,
and many things are fruity without being sugary. I've eaten
oranges that tasted orangy, but had no detectable sweetness at
all. I've also eaten oranges that were quite sweet, but had
very little orange flavor.

Iris Cohen replied to P van Rijckevorsel:

Could you give me examples of:
Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

cashew (not the nut), juniperberry, yew berry, etc

Juniper and yew berries are fruits. They are called cones, but they
contain seeds if they are fertilized.

The fruity part of a strawberry is an achene. The actual fruits are
those little things all over the outside which contain the seeds.
The edible part of a pineapple is also a holder. Our modern pineapples
are seedless. Not sure which part you would call a fruit.

I didn't know that pineapples are seedless. The whole notion
of developing plants with seedless fruits is mind-boggling. It
poses a problem for my description of "fruit":

An ovary of a plant, containing the seed or seeds,
together with its envelope and any closely-connected parts.

Do I need to leave out the part about containing the seed?

One notable example is the Japanese raisin tree, Hovenia dulcis.
The fruits don't amount to much, but when they ripen, the fruiting
twigs become soft, tasty, & edible.

I'll look it up. Thanks!

Nature is varied and ingenious. Fruits evolve and are further
cultivated to enhance the reproductive ability of the plant. Any
part of a plant may become a storage organ to tide the plant over
the winter or the dry season. This can be leaves, stems, sap, or
roots. If they are used to store sugar, people (and animals) may
find them tasty, and possibly fruity.

I find rhubarb stalks to taste fruity. Do you? Do you think
they contain significant amounts of sugar?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.
..

Mel Turner replied to Jeff Root:

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.

But those things that "do not" really don't always taste like one
another either,

Of course. Even if the textures were anything alike, I
wouldn't mistake the flavor of tomato for the flavor of squash.
But I fail to get your point.

and your "fruity" fruits seem to have a lot of different
distinctive tastes

Yes, certainly. I think all of these flavors and hundreds of
others are available in artificial form, for flavoring candy
or pudding or you-name-it. I can usually identify the fruit
without being told what it is supposed to be.

and may share little other than sugary sweetness.

I don't believe that for a second. Sucrose doesn't taste
fruity. (Does fructose??? If it does, I haven't noticed.)
Peppermint candy doesn't taste fruity. Wintergreen candy
doesn't taste fruity. Mints seem not to be a fruity group
of flavors, though they come close. Sweetened chocolate
doesn't taste fruity. Egg custard doesn't taste fruity.
Glazed carrots don't taste fruity.

I'd better repeat that when I say "taste", I may really mean
"smell". I don't know enough about the the physiology of taste
and smell to say where one leaves off and the other begins.

There are edible fruits that are pretty different from the
sweet juicy flesh of the "fruity" fruits you have in mind
[e.g., avocados, plantains, eggplant]

Yes, of course. They go in the second list, with bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash, which generally
do not taste fruity. Why don't they?

(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)

Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

Many "fruits" are actually not strict botanical fruits [= the
further developed and ripened products of the ovaries of
flowering plants]. The small "seeds" on a strawberry are the true
fruits [achenes] of the plant; the fleshy red stuff is part of the
receptacle of the flower. A rose hip similarly isn't a fruit, but
the hard seedlike structures on the inside are the true fruits.

A fig also isn't a true fruit, but is a hollow fleshy inflorescence
[flowering stalk] with the many small seedlike true fruits from
many separate small flowers on the inside. There are also fleshy
"fruits" derived from flower stalks [cashew apples _Anacardium_];
fruits where the fleshy bits are the sepals of the flower, not
the ovaries; fruits where all the fleshy edible stuff is from
special structures [arils] attached to the seeds, and not part
of the ovary wall. Etc.

I'm not a botanist, and don't expect to play one on TV. My use
of the term "fruit" is based on the functions and qualities of
the plant part. The two relevant functions that I'm aware of
are that the fruit provides nourishment for the seed after it
germinates, and that it is attractive to animals, so that the
animals will distribute the seed for the plant. Both functions
are accomplished in part by having nutritive stuff in the fruit.
The second function is accomplished in part by having a fruity
smell and taste which attracts certain animals. (Cats will
never distribute orange seeds, I think.) The evolutionary
development of the plant structures that you refer to is
important in its own right, but I don't think is useful in
defining whether a part of a plant is a fruit or not.

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

Most plants with fleshy edible fruits aren't cultivated. Many
may potentially be suitable for such use, but haven't been
adopted and selected for use by human growers. Why? Because
very few people seem dedicated to trying to domesticate entirely
new crops from wild plants?

Perhaps, but as I said to "PvR", I think that anything that
can be done that has a money-making potential will be tried.
If somebody eats a plant out of desperation or curiosity and
finds it to be halfway interesting, they will try to make some
money by growing and selling it.

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

Why just this combination of traits? There are non-"fruity"
fruits that are still cultivated for food. And even some food
plants that aren't cultivated.

Brevity. I didn't want to ask you questions that I already
have adequate answers to. I've answered the easy questions,
now I'm asking for help with the harder ones.

Ultimately I'd like to have several widely-familiar examples
of each.

Is this perhaps for a class assignment?

No, but I realized before I posted it that it sure does read
that way. :-)

If so, perhaps it would
be better to help you learn to find your own examples.

Even if not. But some ways of doing things are easier than
others. I'm lazy and fairly smart and I try to ask for help
when I need it to get the project done, even if it is my own
project and there is no deadline.

For example, try

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

and try putting varying combinations of key words such as
"fruits", "domestication", "receptacle", "ovary", "flower"
into the "with all of the words" box.

Now, why should I use the terms "receptacle" or "flower"?
Those are certainly terms I never would have thought of myself.

Here's a page no search engine will find. It's the reason for
my questions. I'm working on the auxillary info at the bottom
of the page. It may also be necessary to add something about
seedless fruit, somewhere. I'm giving you a sneak preview of
my nearly-but-not-quite finished page... The Tomato Question.

http://www.freemars.org/jeff2/tomato/

This page will be removed after I've finished it and added it
to my main site (http://www.freemars.org/jroot/), hopefully
real soon now.

I haven't been able to find much info about the taste
of parts of plants not normally eaten. :-)

Experimenting yourself on some species may be ill-advised.

I figure other people have already tried *everything*, so I
might as well ask here to find out what they learned.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.
..

Mel Turner replied to Jeff Root:

What distinguishes fruits which taste fruity from those which
do not? For example, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries,
and grapes usually taste fruity when ripe, while bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash generally do not.

But those things that "do not" really don't always taste like one
another either,

Of course. Even if the textures were anything alike, I
wouldn't mistake the flavor of tomato for the flavor of squash.
But I fail to get your point.

and your "fruity" fruits seem to have a lot of different
distinctive tastes

Yes, certainly. I think all of these flavors and hundreds of
others are available in artificial form, for flavoring candy
or pudding or you-name-it. I can usually identify the fruit
without being told what it is supposed to be.

and may share little other than sugary sweetness.

I don't believe that for a second. Sucrose doesn't taste
fruity. (Does fructose??? If it does, I haven't noticed.)
Peppermint candy doesn't taste fruity. Wintergreen candy
doesn't taste fruity. Mints seem not to be a fruity group
of flavors, though they come close. Sweetened chocolate
doesn't taste fruity. Egg custard doesn't taste fruity.
Glazed carrots don't taste fruity.

I'd better repeat that when I say "taste", I may really mean
"smell". I don't know enough about the the physiology of taste
and smell to say where one leaves off and the other begins.

There are edible fruits that are pretty different from the
sweet juicy flesh of the "fruity" fruits you have in mind
[e.g., avocados, plantains, eggplant]

Yes, of course. They go in the second list, with bell peppers,
tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, olives, and squash, which generally
do not taste fruity. Why don't they?

(When anyone other than a botanist mentions "fruit", what is
meant is almost always a member of the first group, and not
the second.)

Could you give me examples of:

Parts of plants which taste fruity, but are not fruits.
(The only example I can think of is rhubarb.)

Many "fruits" are actually not strict botanical fruits [= the
further developed and ripened products of the ovaries of
flowering plants]. The small "seeds" on a strawberry are the true
fruits [achenes] of the plant; the fleshy red stuff is part of the
receptacle of the flower. A rose hip similarly isn't a fruit, but
the hard seedlike structures on the inside are the true fruits.

A fig also isn't a true fruit, but is a hollow fleshy inflorescence
[flowering stalk] with the many small seedlike true fruits from
many separate small flowers on the inside. There are also fleshy
"fruits" derived from flower stalks [cashew apples _Anacardium_];
fruits where the fleshy bits are the sepals of the flower, not
the ovaries; fruits where all the fleshy edible stuff is from
special structures [arils] attached to the seeds, and not part
of the ovary wall. Etc.

I'm not a botanist, and don't expect to play one on TV. My use
of the term "fruit" is based on the functions and qualities of
the plant part. The two relevant functions that I'm aware of
are that the fruit provides nourishment for the seed after it
germinates, and that it is attractive to animals, so that the
animals will distribute the seed for the plant. Both functions
are accomplished in part by having nutritive stuff in the fruit.
The second function is accomplished in part by having a fruity
smell and taste which attracts certain animals. (Cats will
never distribute orange seeds, I think.) The evolutionary
development of the plant structures that you refer to is
important in its own right, but I don't think is useful in
defining whether a part of a plant is a fruit or not.

Fruits which taste fruity but are not cultivated for food.
(And maybe some indication of *why* they aren't.)

Most plants with fleshy edible fruits aren't cultivated. Many
may potentially be suitable for such use, but haven't been
adopted and selected for use by human growers. Why? Because
very few people seem dedicated to trying to domesticate entirely
new crops from wild plants?

Perhaps, but as I said to "PvR", I think that anything that
can be done that has a money-making potential will be tried.
If somebody eats a plant out of desperation or curiosity and
finds it to be halfway interesting, they will try to make some
money by growing and selling it.

Fruits which do not taste fruity and are not cultivated for
food. (And again some indication of why they aren't.)

Why just this combination of traits? There are non-"fruity"
fruits that are still cultivated for food. And even some food
plants that aren't cultivated.

Brevity. I didn't want to ask you questions that I already
have adequate answers to. I've answered the easy questions,
now I'm asking for help with the harder ones.

Ultimately I'd like to have several widely-familiar examples
of each.

Is this perhaps for a class assignment?

No, but I realized before I posted it that it sure does read
that way. :-)

If so, perhaps it would
be better to help you learn to find your own examples.

Even if not. But some ways of doing things are easier than
others. I'm lazy and fairly smart and I try to ask for help
when I need it to get the project done, even if it is my own
project and there is no deadline.

For example, try

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

and try putting varying combinations of key words such as
"fruits", "domestication", "receptacle", "ovary", "flower"
into the "with all of the words" box.

Now, why should I use the terms "receptacle" or "flower"?
Those are certainly terms I never would have thought of myself.

Here's a page no search engine will find. It's the reason for
my questions. I'm working on the auxillary info at the bottom
of the page. It may also be necessary to add something about
seedless fruit, somewhere. I'm giving you a sneak preview of
my nearly-but-not-quite finished page... The Tomato Question.

http://www.freemars.org/jeff2/tomato/

This page will be removed after I've finished it and added it
to my main site (http://www.freemars.org/jroot/), hopefully
real soon now.

I haven't been able to find much info about the taste
of parts of plants not normally eaten. :-)

Experimenting yourself on some species may be ill-advised.

I figure other people have already tried *everything*, so I
might as well ask here to find out what they learned.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Subtract 1 from my e-mail address above for my real address.
..