• shuzuko@midwest.social
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    9 months ago

    Strawberries, raspberries and boysenberries are not berries. They’re accessory fruit. Very berries and power berries don’t seem to be a thing, unless you’re translating them from another language incorrectly into English. You listed exactly one berry, the blueberry, proving their point that most people actually don’t know much about their food. “Colloquial use” has nothing to do with people knowing actual facts about their food, which was the matter under discussion. Further, (anecdotally because I’m at work and can’t be arsed to look it up at the moment though the studies have been done) a lot of people have no idea what kind of plant many of these things even grow on, whether tree, bush, vine, etc. They know it’s a plant. That’s about it. Ignorance about food is at an all time high and modern western society - or at least American society - is highly divorced from the act of food production.

    Here’s a short list of things that are actually berries: bananas, watermelon, cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, grapes, oranges and kiwis. Aside from accessory fruits which are not berries, there are also drupes - stone fruit such as cherries, plums, avocados, etc, which are sometimes lumped under the umbrella of berries and sometimes considered distinct.