page_title: Glossary of plant morphology
section_title: Fruit types
hierarchical_section_title: Glossary of plant morphology / Plant structures / Fruits and seeds / Fruit types
context_page_description: This page provides a glossary of plant morphology. Botanists and other biologists who study plant morphology use a number of different terms to classify and identify plant organs and parts that can be observed using no more than a handheld magnifying lens. This page provides help in understanding the numerous other pages describing plants by their various taxa. The accompanying page—Plant morphology—provides an overview of the science of the external form of plants. There is also an alphabetical list: Glossary of botanical terms. In contrast, this page deals with botanical terms in a systematic manner, with some illustrations, and organized by plant anatomy and function in plant physiology.
  This glossary primarily includes terms that deal with vascular plants, particularly flowering plants. Non-vascular plants, with their different evolutionary background, tend to have separate terminology. Although plant morphology is integrated with plant anatomy, the former became the basis of the taxonomic description of plants that exists today, due to the few tools required to observe.
  Many of these terms date back to the earliest herbalists and botanists, including Theophrastus.
context_section_description: Fruits are divided into different types, depending on how they form, where or how they open, and what parts they are composed of.
  Achaenocarp – see achene.
  Achene – dry indehiscent fruit that have one seed and are formed from a single carpel; the seed is distinct from the fruit wall.
  Caryopsis – the pericarp and seed are fused together, the fruit of many grasses.
  Drupe – outer fleshy part that surrounds a shell with a seed inside.
  Nut – a fruit formed from a pistil with multiple carpels and having a woody covering; e.g. hickory, pecan, and oak.
  Nutlet – a small nut.
  Pod (seedpod) – a dry dehiscent fruit containing many seeds. Examples include follicles, dehiscent capsules, and many but not all legumes.
  Pome – accessory fruit from one or more carpels; specific to the apple and some related genera in the family Rosaceae.
  Samara – winged achene, e.g. maples.
  Utricle – a small inflated fruit with one seed that has thin walls. Fruits are usually one-seeded, as are some species of amaranth.
caption: Scheme of a drupe