Why Are Drupes Called Stone Fruits?

A drupe or stone fruit is an unopened fruit. it has an exocarp (outer fleshy part) surrounding a pit of hard endocarp with a seed inside. due to this difficult endocarp, drupes are called stone fruits.

These fruits usually develop from one fruiting base(carpel), and mostly from flowers with an upper ovary aside from the polypyrenous drupes.

The defining characteristic of the drupe is that the hard, “lignified” ossicle (sometimes called the “pit”) originates from the wall of the flower ovary.

In fruits consisting of small individual drupes (e.g., in raspberries), each is named a drupe, and every one together they will form a fruit. Such fruits are often called “berries,” although botanists use a special definition of berry.

Other fleshy fruits may have a stony shell that forms from the reproductive structure surrounding the seed, but such fruits don’t seem to be drupelets.

Flowering plants that produce fruits include coffee, jujube, mango, olive, most palms (including açai, date, sabal, coconut, and oil palm), pistachios, white sap, cashews, and every one members of the genus Prunus, including almond, apricot, cherry, raspberry, peach, nectarine, and plum.

The term “drupaceous” applies to fruit that has the structure and texture of a drupe but doesn’t exactly meet the definition of a drupe.

As with all fruits, what the typical person says is commonly very different from what the botanist understands. Not all drupes have single, large stones. Raspberries are a decent example. to work out the stones(seeds), the fruit must be carefully opened. Then you’ll see the little stones(seeds) inside. they’re called stones because the seeds retain their shell (called endocarp), not because they’re large and hard.

The many small round parts that frame a raspberry have an identical structure with a awfully small pit inside. These small parts are called drupelets, that is, small drupes.

Forms Of Drupe

The term “stone fruit” is also synonymous with the term “drupe” or, more typically, it should refer only to fruits of the genus prunus.

Freestone Drupes

This refers to fruit(drupe) with a stone that may be easily removed from its flesh. The flesh is not attached to the seed, and it does not have to be cut off to free the seed. Fruits with stone are preferable when you need to remove the seed gently, especially if the removal will be done by hand. Plums with stones are preferred for creating homemade prunes, and cherries with stones are preferred for creating pies and cherry soup.

Clingstone Drupes

This refers to a pear during which the stone cannot be easily removed from the flesh. The flesh is tightly attached to the stone and must be cut off to free the stone . Prunus drupe varieties are preferred as table fruits and for jams because the flesh of stone fruits is more tender and juicy.

Tryma

This is a specialized term for such nut-like fruits, which are difficult to classify. Hickory nuts (Carya) and walnuts (Juglans) within the family juglandaceae grow in an outer shell; these fruits are technically drupes or drupaceae, so they don’t seem to be true botanical nuts.

Drupes vs Berries

There are two main classes of fleshy fruits: drupes and berries. Drupes are characterized by the presence of a fleshy mesocarp but a hard-skinned or bony endocarp, Berries, on the opposite hand, are characterized by the presence of a fleshy endocarp in addition as a mesocarp, and may have quite one seed.

Drupe, in botany, an easy fleshy fruit that typically contains one seed, like the cherry, peach, and olive. As an easy fruit, the drupe comes from one ovary of one flower.

The outer layer of the ovary wall may be a thin skin or rind, the middle layer is thick and typically fleshy (though sometimes as tough as an almond or as fibrous as a coconut), and also the inner layer, called the pit or putamen, is tough and stony.

The pit, which is usually confused with the seed itself, usually contains one seed or, more rarely, two or three, during which case just one of them develops fully. Other representative species of drupes are mango, walnut and dogwood.

Whereas, a berry is a fleshy fruit without a seed (pit) grown from one flower containing one ovary.

Berries include grapes, currants, and tomatoes, furthermore as cucumbers, eggplants (eggplants), and bananas, but don’t include some fruits that meet the culinary definition of berries, like strawberries and raspberries.

A berry is the most typical kind of fleshy fruit during which the complete outer layer of the ovary wall matures into a potentially edible “pericarp.”

Berries is also formed from one or more ovaries of the identical flower (i.e., simple or compound ovary).

The seeds are usually within the fleshy interior of the ovary, but there are non-fleshy exceptions, like peppers, which have seeds surrounded by air instead of pulp.

Key Differences

Credit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupe