Sketchplanations

Explaining one thing a week in a sketch

Fruit vs vegetable drawing: showing the elements of a plant that are fruit or vegetable and a 2x2 matrix for which are commonly miscategorised

Fruit vs vegetable

What's the difference between a fruit and a vegetable? There's that classic thing: tomatoes are really a fruit — well, a whole lot of other vegetables are technically fruit too. I do find this way of thinking of it helpful:

  • Fruit — ovaries developed from the flowering parts containing seeds. They’re basically what grows where the flower was.
  • Vegetable — other edible parts of a plant. So basically, anything else, with a handy list being: leaves, roots, stems and flowers.

So this makes tons of other common vegetables actually fruit, including peas, avocadoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bell peppers and more. And corn and raspberries are still rather complicated.

Also see:

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