Every year people plant gardens, trees, bushes and all to gather fruit.

Whether figs, paw paws, pumpkins, or Ohio’s perfect summer grown tomatoes, we all enjoy the fruit. So, what is fruit?

Fruit is the plant’s response to making seeds appear packaged and enticing to be disbursed out into the world for future growth. According to Britannica, fruit is defined as “fleshy or dry ripened ovary of a flowering plant.” Sounds pretty calculated, doesn’t it? Well, yes, it is. So, let’s look at fruit.

The last article spoke of flowers and the pollination of ovules to make seeds. When this happens, hormones are triggered in the plant to develop the ovary that surrounds the ova (seeds) into a sweet, or nutty, or eye-catching wrapper for the gift of seeds. As a bird eats the berry, the soft, nutrient-rich fruit is digested and the pit (the seed) is dropped as feces as the bird flies away. This assures continuation of this berry bush as a species in life. Over and over this scenario is played out throughout the summer and into fall and winter, as all plants carry out the imperative to reproduce.

All fruit is designed to be appealing in some way. Each animal, bird, or insect that feasts on the bounty of these fruits is doing another part to preserve the native species, as well as the personal choices we all pick, as we take pride in our gardens. Watch a chipmunk gobble up maple samaras into its pouches to horde into its nests. A woodpecker coming to your bird feeder will pick up a sunflower seed and wedge it into a tree limb for winter. So many enticing ways those seeds get moved and planted.

A simple fruit is one flower, with one carpel, forming around one seed, like a cherry. An aggregate fruit has ripened ovaries, with many simple carpels, in one flower, as with the blackberry. Multiple fruit is fused ovaries present in multiple flowers. There are many names given to types of fruits, nuts, capsules, legumes, pepos, berries, drupes and so on. Some fruits have no seeds, making them either genetically engineered, or sterile (not fertilized).

I am always amazed to plant a seed, knowing that it will grow, make into a beautiful plant, continue to flower and make fruit, to be that next generation.

Hughes is an Ohio State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteer in Mahoning County.