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What is a Fruit?
 BECOME A KITCHEN BOTANIST: What ia a Fruit?
Fruits come from flowers.
Flowers of most plants are bisexual, but many species have unisexual flowers, with male and female flowers on different plants. These are most often surrounded by petals which are colorful and attract insects and birds.
Pull away the petals and you’ll see the male sex organs called stamens. They produce pollen. One of more female sex organs or pistils are usually in the middle of a group of pollen producing stamens. A pistil has a sticky top connected by a stalk to a bulbous base called the ovary.
As the pollen sticks to the top of the pistil and then travels down to the bulb, it fertilizes egg cells which develop into a seed made of three parts: an embryo, endosperm and ovary walls.
The pollen grains stick to the top of the pistil and each one produces a microscopic tube that grows between cells of the stalk down into the ovary. It contains an egg cell. The pollen tube contains two sperm cells. One fertilizes the egg and an embryo results. The other sperm cell combines with cells in the ovary to produce the seed’s endosperm. The embryo becomes a seedling and the endosperm provides nutrients for its growth.
Why are we thinking about this right now in the Science Farmers Market?
Because all the grains we eat are actually endosperms that have been thrashed out of the whole seeds. And the parts we eat of apricots, peaches, plums, green beans, squash, eggplant and peppers are primarily the ovary wall around the seed inside. The two halves of the seed in plants like peas and beans are parts of the embryo called cotyledons. They are food storage parts of the embryo which supply nutrients to the young seedling.
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