What is "multiple fruit"

Collective \Col*lect"ive\, a. [L. collectivus: cf. F. collectif.]

1. Formed by gathering or collecting; gathered into a mass, sum, or body; congregated or aggregated; as, the collective body of a nation.
   --Bp. Hoadley.

2. Deducing consequences; reasoning; inferring. [Obs.] ``Critical and collective reason.''
   --Sir T. Browne.

3. (Gram.) Expressing a collection or aggregate of individuals, by a singular form; as, a collective name or noun, like assembly, army, jury, etc.

4. Tending to collect; forming a collection.

   Local is his throne . . . to fix a point, A central point, collective of his sons.
   --Young.

5. Having plurality of origin or authority; as, in diplomacy, a note signed by the representatives of several governments is called a collective note.

   Collective fruit (Bot.), that which is formed from a mass of flowers, as the mulberry, pineapple, and the like; -- called also multiple fruit.
   --Gray.

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

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

Multiple fruits, also called collective fruits, are fruiting bodies formed from a cluster of fruiting flowers, the inflorescence. Each flower in the inflorescence produces a fruit, but these mature into a single mass in which each flower has produced a true fruit. After flowering the mass is called an infructescence. Examples are the fig, pineapple, mulberry, osage-orange, and breadfruit.

In languages other than English, the meanings of multiple and aggregate fruit are reversed, so that multiple fruits merge several pistils within a single flower.

In the photograph on the left, stages of flowering and fruit development in the noni or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) can be observed on a single branch. First an inflorescence of white flowers called a head is produced. After fertilization, each flower develops into a drupe, and as the drupes expand, they become connate (merge) into a multiple fleshy fruit called a syncarp. There are also many dry multiple fruits.

Other examples of multiple fruits:

• Platanus, multiple achenes from multiple flowers, in a single fruit structure
• Mulberry, multiple flowers form one fruit
• Fig, multiple flowers similar to mulberry infructescence form a multiple fruit inside the inverted inflorescence. This form is called a Syconium