Classifying Vegetables

To a botanist, the term fruit refers to a specific part of a plant, just as do the terms stem, root, and leaf. A fruit is defined as the ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant, and it contains the seeds. In other words, if it has seeds, it’s a fruit. We shouldn’t be misled by the fact that a few fruits are sweet. Many, if not most, fruits in nature are not sweet at all. Some examples of fruits used in the vegetable kitchen are tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, green beans, okra, cucumbers, squash, pea pods, and avocados.