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Types of berries

True berries

Several types of common "berries", none of which is a berry by botanical definition:
The blueberry is a false berry, blackberries are aggregate fruit, and strawberries are accessory fruit.

In botanical language, a berry or true berry is a simple fruit having seeds and pulp produced from a single ovary. The true berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and one or more carpels within a thin covering and fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary.

Examples of true berries include

Modified berries, Juicy berries

The fruit of citrus, such as the orange, kumquat and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium.

Not a botanical berry

Many "berries" are not actual berries by the scientific definition, but fall into one of these categories:

Drupes

Drupes are fruits produced from a single-seeded ovary or achene.

• Hackberry (Celtis spp.; Cannabaceae)
• Açaí (Euterpe), a palm fruit native to the Amazon region

Epigynous fruits

Epigynous fruits are berry-like fruits formed from inferior ovaries, in which the receptacle is included. Notable examples are the fruits of the Ericaceae, including blueberry, huckleberry and cranberry.

• Bearberry (Arctostaphylos spp.), Crowberry (Empetrum spp.) and Cranberry
• Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea)
• Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo), not to be confused with the actual strawberry (Fragaria)
• Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera; Polygonaceae)
• The fruit of cucumbers, melons and their relatives are modified berries called "pepoes".

Compound fruits

Compound fruits are groups or aggregates of multiple individual fruits, and include:

• Aggregate fruits are multiple fruits with seeds from different ovaries of a single flower, such as blackberry, raspberry, bayberry, and boysenberry
• Multiple fruit, are the fruits of separate flowers, packed closely together. The mulberry, for example, is essentially like a cluster of grapes, but tiny and compressed into one "berry"^[1].
• Other accessory fruit, where the edible part is not generated by the ovary, such as the strawberry for which the seed-like achenes are actually the "fruit" derived from the ovary.

Raspberries are not true berries, but aggregate fruits composed of many drupes

Colour and medical benefits

By contrasting in colour with their background, berries are more attractive to animals that eat them, aiding in the dispersal of the plant's seeds.

Berry colours are due to natural plant pigments. Many are polyphenols such as the flavonoids, anthocyanins, and tannins localized mainly in berry skins and seeds. Berry pigments are usually antioxidants and thus have oxygen radical absorbance capacity ("ORAC") that is high among plant foods.^[2] Together with good nutrient content, ORAC distinguishes several berries within a new category of functional foods called "superfruits" and is identified by DataMonitor as one of the top 10 food categories for growth in 2008^[3].