comptometer

The term fruit has lots of different meanings depending on context. In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary—jointly with seeds—of a flowering plant. In many species, the fruit includes the ripened ovary and the nearby tissues. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants disseminate seeds. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the word generally refers to those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which contain plums, apples and oranges. On the other hand, a great many common vegetables, also as nuts and grains, are the fruit of that plant species. No single terminology truly fits the enormous variety that is found along with plant fruits. The cuisine terminology for fruits is inexact and will stay so. The term false fruit (pseudocarp, accessory fruit) is sometimes applied to a fruit similar to the fig (a multiple-accessory fruit; see below) or to a plant structure that resembles a fruit but is not derived from a flower or flowers. Some gymnosperms, like yew, have fleshy arils that look like fruits and some junipers have berry-like, fleshy cones. The word "fruit" has also been inaccurately applied to the seed-containing female cones of many conifers.

// posted by wibsio3 @ 1:08 AM