Fruits are the mature ovary or ovaries of one or more flowers. They are found in three main anatomical categories: aggregate fruits, multiple fruits, and simple fruits.
Fruitlike structures may develop directly from the seed itself rather than the ovary, such as a fleshy aril or sarcotesta.
_q.jpg)
In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the pip (UK), pit (US), stone, or pyrena) of hardened endocarp with a seed (kernel) inside. Drupes do not split open to release the seed, i.e., they are indehiscent. These fruits usually develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries (polypyrenous drupes are exceptions).
The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, woody (lignified) stone is derived from the ovary wall of the flower. In an aggregate fruit, which is composed of small, individual drupes (such as a raspberry), each individual is termed a drupelet, and may together form an aggregate fruit. Such fruits are often termed berries, although botanists use a different definition of berry. Other fleshy fruits may have a stony enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed, but such fruits are not drupes.
Peel, also known as rind or skin, is the outer protective layer of a fruit or vegetable which can be peeled off. The rind is usually the botanical exocarp, but the term exocarp also includes the hard cases of nuts, which are not named peels since they are not peeled off by hand or peeler, but rather shells because of their hardness.
A fruit with a thick peel, such as a citrus fruit, is called a hesperidium. In hesperidia, the inner layer (also called albedo or, among non-botanists, pith) is peeled off together with the outer layer (called flavedo), and together they are called the peel. The flavedo and albedo, respectively, are the exocarp and the mesocarp. The juicy layer inside the peel (containing the seeds) is the endocarp.