[Sca-cooks] Beans, beans, the musical fruit....

[Terry Decker]

Botanically, coffee beans are the seeds of a (pulpy) fruit and are called
beans because of their bean-like shape.  A fruit is the mature, seed bearing
ovary of a flower (angiosperm), so pods, drupes (in singular, multiple or
aggregate forms), grains and nuts are also fruit.  For legumes, the fruit is
a bi-valve pod with the seeds attached to one of the sutures, and the seeds
are generally called peas or beans.

BTW, pine nuts aren't really nuts, because they aren't a fruit, but are
seeds from a cone, the unisexual peproductive unit of a gymnosperm.

Bear

>Back to your earlier comment, would coffee 'beans' be considered berries or
>fruits because they grow on trees and not within a pod?
>Christianna
>