JUST IN: Strawberries Are Not Berries, Yet Avocados and Watermelon Are

Ready to have your mind blown, your childish innocence shattered, your ideas of everything right in the world torn asunder? Strawberries are not really berries, but watermelon, pumpkins, bananas, and avocados are. It’s okay. Take a few deep breaths. We’re right here with you.

While we’ve tended to define berries as any small edible fruit, the official definition of a berry is “a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary.”  By this definition, oranges, kumquats, blueberries, and even tomatoes can be considered part of the berry family.

Strawberries, on the other hand, are known as “accessory fruits,” which makes it sound like they did something wrong.  They’re just trying to exist, man! In these fruits, the surrounding flesh around the seed isn’t derived from the fruit’s ovaries but from the receptacle in which the ovaries are found.  When fully developed, these aggregates have merged together into one single fruit.  Hows that for fruitception?

Mind blown. Drops mic.

H/T Reddit