Berries

There isn’t a stringent set of botanical rules for classifying berries and fruits. Similar to the way that vegetables are sometimes classified as fruit for their intended culinary use, berries are classified for their appearance. Terms like simple fruit (true berry), aggregate and multiple (false berries) describe the way that the ovary will grow into a fruit. The term “accessory” is applied to fruit like the strawberry and the blackberry for the way they hang on the bush. In other words, the term accessory is a nod to the way that the fruit presents itself; much like an earring would accessorize an ear. Truth be told, the strawberry and blackberry are at once aggregate, accessory, and false berries but for the sake of simplicity, they are most likely to be referred to as an accessory (See chart below).