Talk:Epigynous berry/old title

Your article on cucumbers says that the cucumber is a fruit. This entry includes it as a "false berry" ie technically not a fruit. Is there a contradiction here?

Don't think so. As I understand it, false berries are still fruit. I may be wrong, though. Daibhid C 13:57 4 Dec 2005

Either way, it is either a false berry or a true berry. The entry contradicts itself by listing it as a true berry in the table and a false berry in the text. Which is correct? Bvbacon 19:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The move of cucumber from "false berry" to "true berry" in the table appears to have been a mistaken result of reformatting on 28 April. I've put it back. Also, false berries are fruit; accessory fruits are fruit. So this is not a contradiction. Bvbacon 19:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I found that the table was repeated in berry so I wanted to be sure I was right about the classification as a false berry. My spot research did not turn up a definitive conclusion (including about the proper existence of the term "false berry") but several resources seemed to indicate that a cucumber is not a true berry.

http://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/botany/vegetab.htm -- a university resource that identifies true berries as such (eggplant, tomato) but fails to identify the cucumber as one

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576964/Fruit.html Lists the cucumber as a "pepo", different from a "true berry". Now I've burned half an hour trying to get an answer that nobody probably really cares about.

Bvbacon 19:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

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I was just a little curious...is the banana itself the false berry, or (in the picture provided) are the little extra ends on the bananas the false berries? I guess what I mean is, I don't understand weather a false berry is the result of the fruit growing from some part other than the ovary and it ALWAYS happens or if it is the result of some deformity or other in that particular banana tree. Or maybe some possibility I wasn't able to come up with. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.210.149.244 (talk • contribs)

The false berry is the fruit, i.e. the banana itself. The extra ends are just remnants of the floral parts. The fleshy part is not derived from the ovary but from some other adjacent tissue. I don't think it is caused by a deformity, if that were true some banana plants would not produce fruit. SCHZMO ✍ 15:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand

This entry seems to only provide a partial explaination of what a false berry is. As I argue with myself, that previous statement is untrue. This provides an almost dictionary definition, but this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. Maybe some discussion of advantages / disadvantages of false berries?

Is there such a thing as a False Berry?

While the term "True Berry" exists in just about every resource I've been able to find, I have not found anything referencing a "False Berry". I question whether such a term truly exists in Botany, other than as jargon. I nominate this article for deletion unless someone can prove it's a valid term with a well defined meaning. Bvbacon 21:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It is certainly a term that is used in some quarters at least, if not widely; personally, I'd not support deleting the page, but would support merging it with berry, the various structural differences between different berries can be better dealt with on one page, enabling e.g. illustrated comparisons (compare e.g. the merging of monoecious and dioecious into one article plant sexuality) - MPF 21:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It is a synonym of epigynous berry, as in the wiki article. [1] Meggar 02:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Could we get more sources/detail on that? I can't really evaluate that site's credentials. If it is correct that Epigynous berry and False berry are synonyms, I think that at the least the entry should be under Epigynous berry rather than False berry. False berry should redirect to it. I'm even more in favor of making it part of the Berry entry, once we get more information. I'm still not convinced that Epigynous berries are not a subset of berries. - Bvbacon 18:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion

This article was nominated for deletion. The outcome was speedy keep. Capitalistroadster 10:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Blueberries

This article lists blueberries as an example of a false berry, but the table and the blueberry article itself both state that it's a true berry. May I remove it as an example? (You've got enough other examples, I think.) Jeff Worthington 15:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Ribes (gooseberry & currant) is a bad example of a berry as the ovary is usually party to fully inferior in this genus. Blueberries are also derived from an inferior ovary. I just checked the history of this page and all of these were originally under "false berry"; the formatting of the table was screwed up when somebody removed "grape" from the "true berry" column. BTW "false berry" is a rather obscure term that isn't much used in botany, as far as I can tell. MrDarwin 15:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

botanist needed

How can one find a botanist among WP editors? We need an expert to sort out the unresolved false berry vs. (true) berry mess and discrepancies discussed here and on Talk:Cranberry and existing in and between this article and Vaccinium_vitis-idaea, Cranberry, Vaccinium, and several related articles. It's hard to believe all those articles are incorrect, so the error is probably here in this article. --Espoo 20:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Those articles could all be incorrect if the same editor changed them all. A start at fixing it would be to get a few here to agree that those are not examples of True berries. MrDarwin might be one. As for this article, it might be best to merge it into Berry, where the difference between the two could be explained and illustrated rather than fought about. Meggar 03:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Plant classification help

Seems we need a good plant classification source to help resolve these issues of berry/false berry inconsistency and fruit terms in general.

Here's an online portion of an authoritative text on Vascular Plant Systematics which may help the editors and could be used to help clarify the page on fruits in general:

http://www.ibiblio.org/botnet/glossary/vasc.html

Note that, on this glossary page from that text, the term "false berry" does not appear at all. Cucumbers are designated as pepos.

http://www.ibiblio.org/botnet/glossary/a_xi.html

The same is true (absence of term "false berry") of the glossary on the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. In the glossary, the single word "false" is stated to be of little use. Relevant terms for fruit types are linked under the glossary entry for fruit.

http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/welcome.html

Hope this helps -- I'm not an expert myself. These sources would suggest to me that use of the term "false berry" does not follow accepted terminology and that therefore it shouldn't be used in the Wikipedia articles. --EABaker 20:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes what we need is less dependence on glossaries and more on understanding and explaining a subject. It was overdependence on a few out-of-context links that caused this trouble. I have restored the page a bit, see if it is getting any better. Meggar 19:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Sarge. You mistake the common word “fake” with the botanical “false”. False berries and True berries are both equally berries. People often overreact to botanical language, then find that the subject is not so exciting as to be rate much study. Before you revert it again, take a look at any photos of blueberries and grapes and work out for yourself why one has the calyx at the tip and the other doesn’t. There is a fundamental difference, regardless of what anyone calls it. Oh, a look at the history of those two other articles will reveal how they came to be incorrect. Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, or anywhere else! Meggar 06:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I suppose I was relying too much on other articles. Right now blueberries, cranberries, gooseberries, and currants are listed as true berries at various locations across Wikipedia, including berry, blueberry, and Vaccinium. On the blueberry talk page, someone presented this document, published by Penn State University, as a source for blueberries as a true berry. On page 63, it says "The fruit of the strawberry differs from the true berry such as the blueberry." I am by no means a botanist. I would simply like to see consistency between these articles, and I would like to know that information is correct. Owen 06:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, those other articles are that way because they were copied from this one. And there is another shade of meaning as used in that link, alas all far too difficult to maintain here, as we see from the long stream of confusion above. This must be why botanists use obscure Latin/Greek terms. I felt that the advantage with keeping it as “False berry” was that it could pique a bit of curiosity from those encountering it, as it did for me once. It will serve better renamed to epigynous berry.