A surprisingly challenging concept for a botany professor to teach is that all flowering plants have fruit. And every ripened ovary encasing seeds is a fruit. And everything that has a fruit, by definition, had flowers. And that most plants (including grasses, oak trees, and "weeds") are "flowering plants."
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So that factoid that somebody taught you, "tomatoes are really fruit" is botanically completely true. "Zucchinis are really fruit," "Cucumbers are really fruit," "Green peppers are really fruit," "Okra is really a fruit," and "Green beans are really fruit," somehow don't get told haughtily at school lunchrooms in the same fashion, but are no less true.
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Here's a sampling of my parents' fall fruit crop. The flowers were probably stunning.
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