Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus, Family Cucurbitaceae) is the fruit and plant of a vine-like (climber and trailer) herb originally from southern Africa. This flowering plant bears an accessory fruit of a type that botanists call a false berry. The watermelon fruit, loosely considered a type of melon (although not in the genus Cucumis), has a smooth exterior rind and a juicy, sweet, usually red interior flesh. The species descriptor Citrullus vulgaris is sometimes, synonymously, used to refer to this plant (Including:

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In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant. In many species, the fruit incorporates the ripened ovary and surrounding tissues. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants disseminate seeds. Evolution has led plants to adopt certain basic mechanisms, seemingly without close regard to the tissues involved. No one terminology really fits the enormous variety that is found among plant fruits. Botanical terminology for fruits is inexact and will remain so. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as fo ...

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The melon is the fruit and plant of a typically vine-like (climber and trailer) herb that was first cultivated more than 4000 years ago (~ 2000 BC) in Persia and Africa. This flowering plant bears an accessory fruit of a type that botanists call a false berry. Many different melon cultivars have been produced, perhaps the most popular or well-known being cantaloupe and honeydew. The watermelon, also a cucurbit, ...

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20+ species; see text The strawberry (Fragaria) is a genus of plants in the family Rosaceae, and the fruit of these plants. There are more than 20 named species and many hybrids and cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the Garden Strawberry, a Fragaria × ananassa hybrid. Strawberry - Morphology. The strawberry is an accessory fruit; that is, the fleshy part is derived not from the ovaries (which are the "seeds", actually achen ...

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Strawberry varieties vary remarkably in size, colour, flavour, shape, degree of fertility, season of ripening, liability to disease and constitution of plant. Some vary in foliage, and some vary materially in the relative development of their sexual organs. In most cases the flowers appear hermaphroditic in structure, but function as either male or female. For purposes of commercial production, plants are propagated from runners and generally distributed as either bare root plants or plugs. Cultivation follows one of two models, annua ...

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David Livingstone, an African explorer, described watermelon as abundant in the Kalahari Desert, where it is believed to have originated. There, the ancestral melon grows wild and is known as the Tsamma melon (Citrullus lanatus var citroides). It is recognizable by its pinnatifid leaves and prolific fruit, up to 100 melons on a single vine. For this reason it is a popular source of water in the diet of the indigenous people, as well as a food for humans and livestock. The flesh is similar to the rind of a watermelon and ...

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In the Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament rotten figs are used as a symbol for destruction, and in the New Testament Jesus rebukes an unfruitful fig tree. The Fig is one of the two sacred trees in Islam. Many Muslims consider Fig trees sacred. Because of the peculiar form of the flower of figs, ancient Indians regarded the fig as a flowerless tree. Buddhist and Hindu texts sometimes refer to 'seeking flowers in a fig tree' to indicate something that is pointless or impossible, or to indicate the total absence of some quality (compa ...

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After an ovule is fertilized in a process known as pollination, the ovary begins to expand. The petals of the flower fall off and the ovule develops into a seed. The ovary eventually comes to form, along with other parts of the flower in many cases, a structure surrounding the seed or seeds that is the fruit. Fruit development continues until the seeds have matured. With some multiseeded fruits the extent of development of the flesh of the fruit is propo ...

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Cantaloupe melons are a good source of potassium, vitamin A and folate. They are helpful to the kidneys and are a useful laxative. The proper name for the canteloupe, the kind that can be found in most supermarkets in the US, is musk melon. Real canteloupe melons are mostly available in Europe, among other places. Honeydew melons contain few nutrients and modest amounts of potassium but almost no vitamin A. ...

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The strawberry is an accessory fruit; that is, the fleshy part is derived not from the ovaries (which are the "seeds", actually achenes) but from the peg at the bottom of the hypanthium that held the ovaries. So from a technical standpoint, the seeds are the actual fruits of the plant, and the flesh of the strawberry is a vegetable. It is greenish-white as it develops and in most species turns red when ripe. The rosette growth of the plants are a well-known characteristic. Most species send out long slender runners that produce a new bud at the extremity. The leaves typically have three leaflets, but t ...

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David Livingstone, an African explorer, described watermelon as abundant in the Kalahari Desert, where it is believed to have originated. There, the ancestral melon grows wild and is known as the Tsamma melon (Citrullus lanatus var citroides). It is recognizable by its pinnatafid leaves and prolific fruit, up to 100 melons on a single vine. For this reason it is a popular source of water in the diet of the indigenous people, as well as a food for humans and livestock. The flesh is similar to the rind of a watermelon and ...

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There are more than 20 Fragaria species worldwide. Key to the classification of strawberry species is recognizing that they vary in the number of chromosomes. There are seven basic types of chromosomes that they all have in common. However, they exhibit different polyploidy. Some species are diploid, having two sets of the seven chromosomes (14 chromosomes total). Others are tetraploid (four sets, 28 chromosomes total), hexaploid (six sets, 42 chromosomes total), octoploid (eight sets, 56 chromosomes total), o ...

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For commercial plantings, one beehive per acre (4,000 m² per hive) is the minimum recommendation by the US Department of Agriculture for pollination of conventional, seeded varieties. Because seedless hybrids have sterile pollen, pollinizer rows of varieties with viable pollen must also be planted. Since the supply of viable pollen is reduced and pollination is much more critical in producing the seedless variety, the recommended number of hives per acre, or pollinator density, increases to thre ...

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Fresh watermelon may be eaten in a variety of ways and is also often used to flavor summer drinks and smoothies. The simplest way to cut a watermelon is to slice it crossways and then to slice the resulting round slabs into halves or quarters (pictured above). This method is generally used in a casual setting where people do not mind the juices flowing everywhere. Since the rind provides a handle, no utensils are needed. If the watermelon is to be eaten in conjunction with a meal, it is generally cut into bite-sized squares or balled with a melon baller. The resulting pieces are often mixed with other me ...

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The watermelon slice is striking and unmistakable in appearance. Art related to the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead — October 31–November 2) commonly depicts watermelons being eaten by the dead or shown in close conjunction with the dead. This theme appears regularly on ceramics and in other art from the holiday. Watermelons are a frequent subject in Mexican still life art. The image of a watermelon slice being eaten and general references to watermelons sometimes historically have been used derogatorily. In th ...

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One cup (144 g) of strawberries constitutes approximately 45 calories (188 kJ) and is an excellent source of vitamin C and flavonoids. ...

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Many foods are botanically fruits, but are treated as vegetables in cooking. These include cucurbits (e.g., squash and pumpkin), maize, tomato, cucumber, aubergine (eggplant), and sweet pepper, along with nuts, and some spices, such as allspice, nutmeg and chiles. Rarely, culinary "fruits" are not fruits in the botanical sense. For example, rhubarb may be considered a fruit, though only the astringent stalk or petiole is edible. In the commercial world, European Union rules define carrot as a fruit for the purposes of ...

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The name is derived from Old English streawberige which is a compound of streaw meaning "straw" and berige meaning "berry". The reason for this is unclear. It may derive from the strawlike appearance of the runners, or from an obsolete denotation of straw, meaning "chaff", referring to the scattered appearance of the achenes. Interestingly, in other Germanic countries there is a tradition of collecting wild strawberries by threading them on straws. In those countries people find straw-berry to be an easy word to learn co ...

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Variations in fruit structures largely relate to dissemination (called dispersal) of the seeds they contain. Some fruits have coats covered with spikes or hooked burrs, either to prevent themselves from being eaten by animals or to stick to the hairs of animals, using them as dispersal agents. Other fruits are elongated and flattened out naturally and so become thin, like wings or helicopter blades. This is an evolutionary mechanism to incre ...

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