Berry

Berry (Bacca), a term employed in popular language to designate almost any small succulent fruit, but restricted in botanical language to simple fruits with pericarp succulent throughout, whether developed from superior (grape, potato, bitternut, belladonna, bryony, asparagus, tomato), or more commonly inferior ovary (gooseberry, currant, barberry, bilberry, &c.). Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, mulberry, yewberry, &c. are thus all excluded from the definition, for the first is an expanded succulent axis, bearing the true fruits as dry nutlets; and the second and third are an aggregation or aterio of drupes (corresponding in fact, save for their origin from a single flower, to a bunch of cherries). The mulberry arises from the union of a crowded cluster of separate female flowers of which the fruit of each is an achene, the pulp belonging to the calyx, while the red berry-like pulp of the yew fruit is a subsequent upgrowth of Aril (q.v.).—The orange and other fruits of the same family, having a thick rind dotted with numerous oil-glands, and quite distinct from the pulp of the fruit, receives the name hesperidium; the fruit of the pomegranate, which is very peculiar in the manner of its division into cells, is also sometimes distinguished from berries of the ordinary structure by the name balaustra (see POMEGRANATE). Fruits which, like that of the water-lily, are at first juicy, and afterwards, when ripe, are dry, are sometimes designated berry-capsules. Fruits of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceæ) are commonly distinguished under the name of pepo, but, at any rate when the rind as well as the pulp is soft at maturity, are true berries.