Fruit

In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the term usually refers to just those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which would include plum, apple and orange. However, a great many common vegetables, as well as nuts and grains, are the fruit of the plants they come from.

Seed dissemination

Fruits are plant structures whose modifications appear largely to relate to dissemination (called dispersal) of the seeds they contain.

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Some fruits have coats covered with spikes or hooked burrs, either to prevent themselves from being eaten by animals or to stick to the hairs of animals, using them as dispersal agents. Other fruits are elongated and flattened out naturally and so become thin like wings or helicopter blades. This is an evolutionary mechanism to increase dispersal distance away from the parent.

Related Topics:
Animal - Hair - Wing - Helicopter - Evolution - Distance

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