Fleshy fruit

An avocado with a fleshy interior and a stone.

In botany, fleshy fruits are fruits which are fleshy and brightly coloured, making them attractive to animals which eat them and disperse the seeds. The word 'succulent fruit' is synonymous to fleshy fruit and both words are often used interchangeably.

Anatomically, fleshy fruits have a pericarp or 'fruit wall' which is divided in three layers: an outermost exocarp or epicarp, a middle mesocarp and the innermost endocarp.

Classification

Fleshy fruits can be classed into simple and compound fruits.

Simple fleshy fruits include berries, drupes and accessory fruits. Berries generally have many seeds, which include bananas and gooseberries. In contrast, drupes typically only have a single stone or pip, which include peaches and mangoes. Accessory fruits, also known as false fruits or pseudocarps, develop from other parts of the flower like receptacle.

Compound fruits include aggregate fruits and multiple fruits. Aggregate fruits like raspberries develop from multiple ovaries in a single flower. While multiple fruits like figs develop from ovaries from a cluster of multiple flowers called an inflorescence. Although simple fruits can also develop from flowers having compound ovaries.

Anatomy

Main article: Fruit (plant structure)

The thickness of each layer in the pericarp can vary in different kinds of fleshy fruits, and they may also merge into one another during development. For instance in hesperidium, a group of berries which include citrus fruits, the exocarp is leathery and known as flavedo, the flavedo and exocarp make up the peel. While in pepo, a group of berries including melons and cucumbers, the exocarp fuses with the receptacle to form the rind and mesocarp and endocarp make up the flesh. Lychees have a seed surrounded by a fleshy aril and a pericarp forming the peel. Aggregate fruits like raspberries have a receptacle as the core, little fruits (drupelets) surround the core, each drupelet has an exocarp forming the peel, mesocarp forming the flesh and the hard endocarp surrounding the pips.

Accessory fruits like syconium, a group of false fruits including figs, have a fleshy infolded receptacle, the flowers are on the inside of the fruit and they develop into 'seeds' of the fig or drupelets. Flesh in pome, a group of false fruits including apples, is mostly formed by the swollen receptacle and the fused exocarp and mesocarp, the endocarp makes up a film which surrounds the core and seeds. The edible flesh in strawberries is also a swollen receptacle with the dry fruits embedded on the outside.