Drupe

The peach is a typical drupe (stone fruit)

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In botany, a drupe is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp or skin and mesocarp or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) derives from the ovary wall of the flower. Other fleshy fruits may have a stony enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed. These fruits are not drupes.

Related Topics:
Botany - Fruit - Exocarp - Mesocarp - Endocarp - Seed - Carpel - Flower - Superior ovaries

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Some flowering plants which produce drupes are:

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• coffee
• jujube
• mango
• olive
• all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond (in which the mesocarp is somewhat leathery), apricot, cherry, peach, nectarine, and plum.

The term stone fruit can be a synonym for "drupe" or, more typically, it can mean just the fruit of the Prunus species.

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Drupes, with their sweet, fleshy outer layer, attract the attention of animals as a food, and the plant population benefits from the resulting dispersal of its seeds. The endocarp (pit or stone) is often swallowed, passing through the digestive tract, and returned to the soil in faeces with the seed inside unharmed; sometimes it is dropped after the fleshy part is eaten.

Related Topics:
Food - Digestive tract - Faeces

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The coconut is also a drupe, but the mesocarp is fibrous or dry (in this case, called a husk), so this type of fruit is classified as a simple dry fruit, fibrous drupe.

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In an aggregate fruit composed of individual small drupes, each individual is termed a drupelet. Bramble fruits (such as the blackberry or the raspberry) are aggregates of drupelets.

Related Topics:
Aggregate fruit - Bramble - Blackberry - Raspberry

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