Topic: Tomato is a fruit and potato is a veg?

[Hector]

My  daughter asked me hy one is a fruit and the other a veg if they are related. I couldn't answer her...helllp!!!

[pumkinlover]

Tomato you are eating the fruit because it has the seed in- so it is a fruit.
Potato it is part of the root that you are eating. I think that's it anyway ;)
Someone will know for sure :)

[saddad]

That's about right... "vegetable" in biological terms is just "plant" matter... fruit is technically the seed... the tomato is actually a false fruit.. the plant creates these to encourage you (animals) to eat and help with disperse the true seed...  :)

[pumkinlover]

So I guess potatoes are just breed to make a bigger storage part which we eat?
But I wonder what eats potato seeds , probably (back to a post this morning) something which has evolved with a very stronge stomach ;D

[pigeonseed]

Maybe not all seeds are evolved to be dispersed through being eaten? Maybe potato seed just plops to the ground and grows there? I can't imagine it's wind-blown, unless it was a pretty stiff wind!  ;D

My brain has trouble accepting that the fruit is a false fruit and the seed is the fruit. You said it in a convincingly authoritative way, and so I believe you, but it feels wrong  ;D

[Hector]

I'm still confused...is it veg a collective term for edible plant matter...so strawbs and potatoes are veg? Then there is a subdivision of fruit and anther of root veg?
Thanks for this"

[saddad]

Strawberries are a "false fruit" again...  the seeds (true fruit) are on the outside that time.  :)
Yes, tubers are just a storage organ to allow the parent plant to survive a "poor" dry season. Many animals can eat thing we cant "stomache" like grass... birds are not bothered by capsicin in chillies... Deadly Nightshade fruit are eaten ... but not by us! As well as dispersal the other advantage of getting false fruit eaten is that it is planted with it's own block of fertiliser!  :)

[pigeonseed]

I'm still confused...is it veg a collective term for edible plant matter...so strawbs and potatoes are veg? Then there is a subdivision of fruit and anther of root veg?

Surely in culinary terms, fruit is something from a plant, which we eat sweet, as a snack or at the end of a savoury meal? So rhubarb is fruit to us in culinary terms, although in biological terms it's just like spinach or swiss chard. And we don't call tomatoes fruit, when we talk about food.