What is "aggregate fruit"

n. (context botany English) A fruit that develops from the fusion of more than one carpel within a single flower, as for instance, a raspberry.

n. fruit consisting of many individual small fruits or drupes derived from separate ovaries within a common receptacle: e.g. blackberry; raspberry; pineapple [syn: multiple fruit, syncarp]

thumb|right|A raspberry fruit (shown with a raspberry beetle larva) is an aggregate fruit, an aggregate of drupelets thumb|right|The fruit of an Aquilegia flower is one fruit that forms from several ovaries of one flower, and it is an aggregate of follicles. However, because the follicles are not fused to one another, it is not considered an aggregate fruit An aggregate fruit or etaerio is a fruit that develops from the merger of several ovaries that were separate in a single flower. In contrast, a simple fruit develops from one ovary. In languages other than English, the meanings of aggregate and multiple fruit are reversed, so that aggregate fruits merge several flowers. The differences in meaning are due to a reversal in the terminology by John Lindley, which has been followed by most English-language authors.

Not all flowers with multiple ovaries form aggregate fruit; the ovaries of some flowers do not become tightly joined together to make a larger fruit. Aggregate fruits may also be accessory fruits, in which parts of the flower other than the ovary become fleshy and form part of the fruit.

The individual parts of an aggregate fruit come in many forms. Common examples are:

• drupelets:
  • Raspberry
  • Dewberry and blackberry, also an accessory fruit, with a fleshy receptacle
• achenes:
  • Strawberry, also an accessory fruit, with a fleshy receptacle
  • Ranunculus
• follicles:
  • Magnolia
• samaras:
  • Liriodendron tulipifera

The components of other aggregate fruit are more difficult to define. For example, sugar apple ( Annona spp.) fruit are made up of individual berry-like pistils fused with the receptacle.