50 Fun Facts About Berries

Which of these fruits do botanists class as a true berry?

Banana plants bear what botanists call a leathery berry, because the whole fruit grows from the ovary of a single flower. The plant itself is a giant herb, not a tree.

Which botanical berry did the US Supreme Court rule a vegetable in 1893, in a dispute over import tariffs?

Tomato importers argued it was a fruit to escape a tax on vegetables. The court accepted the botany but ruled on the everyday meaning of the word, so the tariff stood.

Which fruit was known as the Chinese gooseberry until exporters renamed it in 1959?

Kiwifruit got its name after a US client warned that anything called a gooseberry might struggle in quarantine. By 1970 every New Zealand export carried the new name.

The specks dotted over a strawberry's skin, which most people take for seeds, are really what?

Tiny dry fruits called achenes cover the outside, each with one seed inside. The juicy red part is the swollen base of the flower, which is why botanists do not count a strawberry as a berry.

Why do cranberry growers flood their fields at harvest time, before machines knock the ripe berries off the vines?

They float, so workers can corral the loose berries into a corner of the flooded bed and pump them out. The low, creeping vines are only under water temporarily.

The rude noise known as blowing a raspberry takes its name from rhyming slang for which word?

Fart is the word hidden in the rhyme: the slang phrase was raspberry tart, later clipped to its first word. Americans know the same noise as a Bronx cheer.

Which author wrote the 1964 children's novel in which a gum-chewing girl swells into a giant blueberry?

Roald Dahl gave Violet Beauregarde that fate in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, after she chews an experimental gum whose dessert course is blueberry pie.

Which country was home to Research In Motion, the company that named its BlackBerry phone after a fruit?

Canada's Research In Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, picked the name from about 40 candidates because the little keyboard buttons looked like the bumpy surface of the fruit.

Silkworms feed almost exclusively on the leaves of which tree, also known for its blackberry-like fruit?

Mulberry leaves are so central to silk that it takes over 100 kg of them to produce 1 kg of raw silk. The caterpillars are drawn to a scent the leaves give off.

After someone chews the West African miracle berry, how do sour foods such as lemons taste for a while?

Sweet is how lemons and limes taste once the berry's protein, miraculin, binds to the tongue's taste buds. In the 1970s US dieters could even buy it in pill form.

Which spirit takes its main flavour from juniper berries, which are really small fleshy cones?

Gin even owes its name to the plant, through an older Continental word for juniper. The so-called berries are seed cones whose fleshy scales have merged into one skin.

According to legend, the goatherd Kaldi discovered which drink after his goats grew lively on red berries?

Coffee is the drink in the tale, which is set in the 9th century. It is probably apocryphal: the story was first written down in 1671, some 800 years later.

Which summer tennis tournament is famous for the strawberries and cream traditionally eaten by its spectators?

Wimbledon crowds got through 34,000 kg of British strawberries and 10,000 litres of cream in 2017 alone. One story traces the pairing to a dessert served to Henry VIII.

Strawberry Field, the Salvation Army children's home behind a 1967 Beatles song title, stood in which English city?

Liverpool's Woolton suburb is where John Lennon grew up, playing in the grounds of the home as a child. The site now welcomes visitors as an attraction.

Which wild berry, the state fruit of Idaho and Montana, shares its name with Mark Twain's boy hero Finn?

Huckleberry suggested something rustic or insignificant, which is why Twain's river boy and the cartoon dog Huckleberry Hound were both given the name.

Which fruit is, to a botanist, a large berry wrapped around a single big seed?

Avocado flesh has no stony shell around the seed, so botanists usually class it as a one-seeded berry instead of a stone fruit like a peach.

Cranberry sauce is the traditional partner of which roast bird at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners?

Turkey and the tart red sauce are so closely tied that American cranberry sales have traditionally clustered around the two winter holidays.

Which evergreen, hung in Christmas wreaths for its red berries, is mildly toxic to people but feeds winter birds?

Holly berries can cause vomiting and diarrhoea in humans, yet many birds eat them freely and scatter the seeds in return.

Which Christmas plant with waxy white berries lives as a parasite on the branches of trees?

Mistletoe draws water and nutrients out of its host through a root-like organ, and the European species can grow on more than 200 kinds of tree and shrub.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, first handed out at a living-room party in 1981, mock the year's worst what?

Movies were the target from the start: the founder passed out ballots at his own Oscar-night potluck. The name comes from the rude noise of blowing a raspberry.

Which pop star wrote the 1985 single Raspberry Beret and recorded it with his band the Revolution?

Prince made it the lead single from Around the World in a Day, dressing the song in strings and Middle Eastern finger cymbals.

Which dark purple fruit of an Amazon palm is blended into the thick smoothie bowls made famous by Brazil?

Açaí was a staple of floodplain villages long before it was promoted as a health food in the mid-1990s. The bowls are commonly topped with granola.

Which tart red berry is traditionally served as a jam alongside Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy?

Lingonberry sauce also accompanies reindeer and elk steaks across Sweden, Finland and Norway. The English name comes straight from the Swedish word lingon.

Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries belong to which plant family, along with apples and almonds?

Rose is the family's namesake flower, and botanists rank the group among the six most economically important crop plant families.

Which farmer-owned cooperative began in 1930 as Cranberry Canners and later introduced the dried snack Craisins?

Ocean Spray was formed by three growers who wanted a bigger market for their crop. It registered the name Craisin as a trademark in 1989.

Which natural gelling agent, sold as a powder made from citrus fruit, helps berry jams and jellies set?

Pectin sets as a sugar-acid gel that only forms as the mixture cools, which is why jam stays runny in the pan and firms up in the jar.

Which English dessert, first mentioned in print in 1893, is a jumble of strawberries, meringue and whipped cream?

Eton mess is commonly believed to come from the famous school, where it is served at the annual cricket match against Harrow. The meringue was a later addition.

Folklore warns against picking blackberries after Old Michaelmas Day because which figure is said to spoil them?

The Devil is said to step, spit or foul on the fruit once 11 October has passed, in a belief found across Britain. Some versions blame a spirit called the Púca instead.

General Mills launched the strawberry cereal Franken Berry in 1971 alongside which other monster-themed cereal?

Count Chocula and his pink rival bickered in the adverts over whose cereal was better. In 1972 an indigestible pigment in Franken Berry turned some children's stools pink.

Which fruit, a hard-rinded berry that botanists call a pepo, was being farmed in Egypt by 2000 BC?

Watermelon was first domesticated in Sudan. Its firm rind and flesh with no internal divisions are what earn a berry the special label of pepo.

Which Midwestern state is America's biggest cranberry grower, well ahead of the crop's old home, Massachusetts?

Wisconsin harvested 59% of the US crop in 2021. Commercial growing began far to the east, when a Revolutionary War veteran planted vines on Cape Cod around 1816.

Which US state is America's top producer of wild lowbush blueberries, its official state fruit?

Maine's blueberry barrens were shaped by Ice Age glaciers, and Native Americans burned them over regularly to make the low bushes fruit more heavily.

Which large berry did farmer Walter Knott bring to market in the 1930s, naming it after the grower who bred it?

Boysenberry vines were rescued from Rudolph Boysen's abandoned, weed-choked farm, and the fruit helped turn Knott's berry farm into a famous amusement park.

Which small red berry, also called the wolfberry, is grown mainly in China's Ningxia region and often sold dried?

Goji has featured in East Asian traditional medicine since at least the 3rd century, though modern claims of special health benefits remain unproven.

Which dark berry, the flavour of the British drink Ribena, was banned from American farms for much of the 1900s?

Blackcurrant bushes carry white pine blister rust, a disease that threatened the US logging industry. The federal ban was lifted in 1966, but some states kept their own.

Which dark berry grows on Sambucus shrubs, whose creamy flowers are made into a cordial and the liqueur St-Germain?

Elderberry juice needs care: a batch pressed from raw berries, leaves and stems made 11 of the 25 people at a California gathering ill in 1983.

Which New Orleans pianist turned the 1940 song Blueberry Hill into an international rock and roll hit in 1956?

Fats Domino was inspired by Louis Armstrong's 1949 recording of the song, and his own version was later named to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Which spice is the dried unripe berry of a Caribbean tree, also sold as Jamaica pepper or pimento?

Allspice was named by the English in the 1600s, who thought a single berry combined the flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.

The modern garden strawberry was first bred in the 1750s, from two American species, in which European country?

France is where gardeners in Brittany crossed a species from eastern North America with a Chilean one, brought home in 1714 by Amédée-François Frézier.

The character Strawberry Shortcake, later a doll and cartoon star, first appeared in the 1970s on what product?

Greeting cards came first: a Valentine's design of 1972–73 sold so well that American Greetings built a whole franchise around its strawberry motif.

Which toxic plant with glossy black berries reputedly gave Renaissance women pupil-widening eye drops?

Belladonna means beautiful woman in Italian, a name Linnaeus chose for the cosmetic trick. The berries are extremely toxic to people, yet birds eat them and spread the seeds.

Which travel food of North America's Indigenous peoples mixes dried meat with melted fat and sometimes berries?

Pemmican takes its name from a Cree word for fat, and it is so concentrated that about five pounds of fresh meat dry down to one pound before the fat goes in.

Which old English dessert folds stewed fruit, classically gooseberries, into custard or whipped cream?

Fool is first recorded as a dessert in 1598, though the gooseberry version may be a century older. At the time the name was used interchangeably with trifle.

Which prairie city takes its name from a Cree word for the violet-coloured serviceberries that grow nearby?

Saskatoon comes from misâskwatômina, the Cree name for the berries, which are native to the region. One account ties it to the Cree cutting the bushes' stems there for arrow shafts.

Which amber berry of the Arctic tundra is called bakeapple in Newfoundland and flavours the Finnish liqueur Lakka?

Cloudberry harvests are celebrated with festivals in Newfoundland and Labrador communities such as Garnish and Forteau, where the fruit goes into pies, jams and wine.

The marionberry, a blackberry variety released in 1956, is named after Marion County in which US state?

Oregon holds more than 90% of the world's marionberry acreage, and the variety was bred and tested in the Willamette Valley before its release.

Which pigments, whose colour shifts with acidity, give blueberries and other berries their red, purple or blue hues?

Anthocyanins turn red in acid and purple when neutral, so they can serve as natural pH indicators. Blueberry leaves hold about ten times more of them than the fruit.

Each juicy bead of a raspberry or blackberry is a miniature stone fruit, with its own seed, called what?

Drupelets each grow from a separate carpel of one flower, and around 100 of them cluster together to make a single raspberry.

Which cross between a blackberry and a raspberry was raised by accident in 1881 by a judge in Santa Cruz?

Loganberry bears the name of James Harvey Logan, who was only trying to cross two kinds of blackberry when a red raspberry growing alongside joined in.

In which US state did Elizabeth White and Frederick Coville first cultivate highbush blueberries in the 1910s?

New Jersey's Pine Barrens were home to White's family cranberry farm. Coville had discovered that the bushes need highly acidic soil and cannot pollinate themselves.