Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show/podcast: When a nut’s not a nut and a berry’s not a berry
I subscribe to a newsletter from my friend and favorite arborist, Faith Appelquist of Treequality. She never disappoints and this month I asked if I could share it with you all!
When is a nut not a nut and a berry not really a berry? She writes: Many of the edible plant products which we call nuts are, in botanical terms, fruit. Fruits of many woody plants are essentially foodstuffs for birds, bears, squirrels, and the forest community. Fruits and nuts are very important considerations in woody landscape plants because they offer good ornamental assets (color, texture) and positive identification features through late summer and into fall.
However, there is a major disconnect between what the layperson may call a “nut” and formal botanical classifications of fruit. For example, a peanut is not a nut but a legume. A Brazil nut is actually a seed! And an almond? That’s actually a drupe, a fleshy fruit with thin skin and a central stone containing the seed. Other examples include plum, cherry and olive.
As for berries? Mountain Ash berries are actually pomes as are Hawthorn berries. A pome is a fruit consisting of a fleshy enlarged receptacle and a tough central core containing the seeds. For example, an apple or pear.
She adds, the list is much longer than the examples she supplied. The question is: Does this discrepancy between layperson’s terms and botanical terms really matter? For the layperson, NOPE. It is fine to eat your “nuts and berries”, oblivious of how they are classified by botanists.
Here is a SEED I found Aug. 30th, 2018 on a walk in my neighborhood: The Buckeye
So what IS a nut? READ more in Faith’s newsletter.
