Fruits V Vegetables

All my life I have always wondered about the difference between Fruits and Vegetables. Really this started after learning that a tomato was a fruit. Later I then believed a tomato was a berry and then i believed that a strawberry wasn't a berry at all. Then i was thinking that a fruit just had seeds and could be grown off of the ground. I mean strawberries grow kind of on the ground but can be grown in a hanging basket. So then I was thinking that all squashes (cucumber, zucchini, pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, etc) were fruits as well. I mean they have seeds and they can grow off the ground (trust me i've had a pumpkin that grew in the air). Plus aren't squashes and melons the same plant?!? I mean they have very similar botanical structures. K enough babbling. Now for the Wiki-Dag.

Bontanically, Fruits are "the matured ovary of a flower, containing the seed." K that's a lot of stuff. Vegetable usually refer to "edible roots, tubers, stems, leaves, fruits, bulbs, flower clusters, and other softer plant parts." Basically vegetables are anything edible that isn't the fruit of the plant. However, according to culinary terms, vegetables are used in salads or are cooked. Thus tomatoes were considered vegetables instead of the berry classification. Also California passed a law saying that tomatoes were vegetables to impose tariffs on Mexican importation of tomatoes. Squashes are cooked- fruits usually aren't cooked. So they are often considered vegetables among the ignorant :D. Furthermore, if anyone has eaten stuffed zucchini flowers- those are considered vegetables. Here's a list of fruits:

True Berry: Blackcurrant, Redcurrant, Gooseberry, Tomato, Eggplant, Guava, Lucuma, Chili pepper, Pomegranate, Avocado, Kiwifruit, Grape,
Pepo: Pumpkin, Gourd, Cucumber, Melon
Hesperidium: Orange, Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit
False berry (Epigynous): Banana, Cranberry, Blueberry
Aggregate fruit: Blackberry, Raspberry, Boysenberry, Hedge apple
Multiple fruit: Pineapple, Fig, Mulberry
Other accessory fruit: Apple, Peach, Cherry, Green bean, Sunflower seed, Strawberry


* Interesting note- all the fruits that have "berry" in their name are not true berries.

Here's a list of vegetables---

leaves (lettuce)
stalks (celery)
roots (carrot)
tubers (potato)
bulbs (onion)
and flowers (broccoli)

Interesting eh?