From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Several types of "berries" from the market.

In botany, the berry is the most common type of simple fleshy fruit, in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and they have one or more carpels within a thin covering and very fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary. Examples of botanical berries include the tomato, grape, litchi, loquat, plantain, avocado, persimmon, eggplant, guava, uchuva (ground cherry), and chile pepper.

The fruit of citrus, such as the orange, kumquat and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium. The fruit of cucumbers and their relatives are modified berries called "pepoes". A plant that bears berries is referred to as bacciferous.

In common parlance, berry refers to any small fruit with multiple seeds. Aggregate fruits such as the blackberry, the raspberry, and the boysenberry are berries in this sense, but not in the botanical sense.

Many berries are small, sweet, juicy, and brightly-colored. By contrasting with their background, they are more attractive to animals that eat them, aiding in the dispersal of the plant's seeds. Most berries are edible, but some are poisonous.

Berry colors are due to natural pigments synthesized by the plant. Medical research^[1] has uncovered medicinal properties of pigmented polyphenols, such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, and tannins and other phytochemicals 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", a rapidly-growing multi-billion dollar industry that began in 2005^[3] and is identified by DataMonitor as one of the top 10 food categories for growth in 2008^[4].

A 2007 report combined four criteria — nutrient content, antioxidant qualities, medical research intensity and commercial success — giving an approximate rank of commercial activity for six exotic superfruits, including wolfberry, sea buckthorn and açaí as the highest rated^[5].

Alaska wild "berries" from the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge.

• List of fruits
• Epigynous berry

• The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens - Description of berries
• Encarta.msn.com - Differentiation between true berries, pepos, and hesperidia
• United States National Berry Crops Initiative
• Berry Health Benefits Network - Scientists working on the health properties of berries