, 1882-06-30
What is a Fruit?

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The above inquiry was suggested
by a baked apple, and the same or a
similar question often crops up with
reference to schedules of flower
shows. Is a cucumber fruit or a
vegetable? Is rhubarb a fruit or a
vegetable? OF course we have our
own ideas upon these points, and
other people have theirs, and the re-
suit is very wide difference of opin-
ion, not unpleasing, perhaps, to those
who contend for the use of English
names and words, but irritating to
those who are trying to get at the
truth, and prefer precision to vague
ness. We turn to Webster's Diction-
airy, and there we find various detini-
tions of the word fruit; one is vague
enough to please any one: What
ever is produced for the enjoyment of
men and animals by the process of
vegetable growth" 1t is clear that
branches, leaves, flowers, roots, tubers,
seeds, perfumes, gals, even, might be
thus classed as fruit, even as the Irish
man called the noble tuber "the fruit
at the root" But, for gardening
purposes, and still more for botanical
purposes, little more precision is
necessary, else we might as well say
that mother and child are identical,
and that the nail on the great toe of
Hercules is equivalent to Hercules
himself. The dictionary, however, is
equal to the occasion. Ii we do not
like one meaning we can try another.
Here is one that will suit our purpose:
"That part of plants which contains
the seed" The dictionary goes on
at once to spoil that definition by ex-
tending it and making it SO vague
that it ceases to be a definition at all;
but we will stop at ''the part of plants
which contains the seed'- we will
confine it to that, and not include any
thing outside the fruit not being an
integral part Of it; nor will we include
anything inside of it which is not es-
sentially a part of it. The fruit is
that part of the plant which contains
the seed, and it is nothing else. The
core of the baked apple is, then, ac-
cording to this, the true fruit, tor that
is the part that contains the pips, and
the pips are the seed. 1t is a carti-
laginous, five lobed capsule, splitting
along both edges. What oddities
botanists are; they seem to reverse
the natural order of things - they
leave on their plates the fruit, and
they eat something which they say is
not the fruit! What is that some
thing which is not the fruit? To an
swer this question to his own person
al satisfaction, not, that is, to be de-
pendent on dogma and 81 say so"
evidence, which is a kind of evidence
eschewed in science, except where no
other can be had, the reader should
see before him flower of an apple or
pear in the earliest stages of its
growth, and he should trace in other
stages, from this earliest condition to
the ripe state, the growth of the
apple VI Ihe pea. 1hcio alo hoI
many young gardeners who have
skill and patience enough to do this
thoroughly, and SO they must, per
force, take something on trust; but
the flesh of the apple or the pear is
nothing whatever but the end Of the
flower stalk, which gradually swells
out into succulent mass, and which
holds embedded within it the true
fruit-the core. What in ordinary
language is called the fruit is, then,
only the swollen flower stalk. So,
then, to say that the core of the apple
is the true fruit, and the flesh thereof
the dilated flower stalk, is no dogma
to be accepted as an article of faith,
but it is a statement which any one
with pair of eyes, ordinarily nimble
fingers, and a little patience, can, at
the proper season, verify for him
self. Another proof is afforded by
the curious malformations of which
the Gardeners Chronicle has from
time to time published so many illus
trations-cases where the stalk has