Is it true that bananas are actually berries?

From Shane Smith

Yes, bananas are indeed berries, but the reasons why are quite complicated. Botanists define berries as a sub-type of fruit that has an outer skin, a fleshy middle and an innermost layer containing more than one seed. Berries also have to grow from one flower that has just one ovary. Bananas, along with many other fruits you wouldn’t expect, like melons and peppers, meet this definition, so they are technically berries. Even so, curiously many fruits that we commonly call berries, such as strawberries and blackberries, aren’t berries according to the scientific definition and might be classified as drupes or aggregate fruit instead.

Answered by Joanna Stass for Brain Dump in How It Works Issue 112

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