Pineapples are berries.

In our everyday language, berries are typically small, juicy fruits. But in botany, a berry is a fruit that develops from the single ovary of an individual flower and has seeds throughout its fleshy interior. By that definition, each segment of a pineapple begins as a berry. As dozens of these berries grow and fuse together, they form the fruit we know as a pineapple.

The tiny seeds on the outside of a strawberry are not actually seeds.

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Those tiny dots are called “achenes”; each one is technically an entire one-seeded fruit itself.

Pineapples grow as a cluster of flowers arranged around a central stalk. Each flower produces its own small fruit; as the fruits grow, they press together and eventually merge into a single structure. Botanists classify this type of structure as a multiple fruit. That’s why the rough exterior of a pineapple has a diamond-shaped pattern: Each section marks the location of a separate flower — and a separate berry — that became part of the finished fruit. Figs and mulberries also fit the multiple-fruit bill; both form from clusters of flowers that combine as they develop. 

Surprisingly, bananas and tomatoes are true botanical berries, too, while the most common fruits that have the label — strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries — are not. The latter three qualify as aggregate fruits, botanically speaking. Unlike a multiple fruit, which develops from multiple flowers, an aggregate fruit develops from multiple ovaries inside a single flower. This results in a cluster of tiny fruitlets that form the larger “berry.”

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