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In botany, a fruit is a part of a flowering plant that derives from specific tissues of the flower, one or more ovaries, and in some cases accessory tissues. Fruits are the means by which these plants disseminate seeds. Many of them that bear edible fruits, in particular, have propagated with the movements of humans and animals in a symbiotic relationship as a means for seed dispersal and nutrition, respectively; in fact, humans and many animals have become dependent on fruits as a source of food. Fruits account for a substantial fraction of the world's agricultural output, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. In common language usage, "fruit" normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of a plant that are sweet or sour and edible in the raw state, such as apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, bananas, and lemons. On the other hand, the botanical sense of "fruit" includes many structures that are not commonly called "fruits", such as bean pods, corn kernels, wheat grains, and tomatoes. The section of a fungus that produces spores is also called a fruiting body. == Botanic fruit and culinary fruit == In the culinary sense of these words, a fruit is usually any sweet-tasting plant product, especially those associated with seeds; a vegetable is any savory or less sweet plant product; and a nut is any hard, oily, and shelled plant product.〔For a Supreme Court of the United States ruling on the matter, see Nix v. Hedden.〕 These culinary vegetables that are botanically fruit include cucurbits (e.g., squash, pumpkin, and cucumber), tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper. In addition, some spices, such as allspice and chilies, are fruits, botanically speaking. In contrast, rhubarb is often referred to as a fruit, because it is used to make sweet desserts such as pies, though only the petiole (leaf stalk) of the rhubarb plant is edible. Edible gymnosperm seeds are often given fruit names, e.g., pine nuts, ginkgo nuts. Botanically, a cereal grain, such as corn, wheat or rice, is also a kind of fruit, termed a caryopsis. However, the fruit wall is very thin, and is fused to the seed coat, so almost all of the edible grain is actually a seed. Many common terms for seeds and fruit do not correspond to the botanical classifications. In botany, seeds are ripened ovules; fruits are the ripened ovaries or carpels that contain the seeds and a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「fruit」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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