The 12 Most Important Types of Fruits, and Their Characteristics

Fruits are an essential part of our diet, since according to the Spanish Federation of Associations of Fruit and Vegetable Exporters (FEPEX), each Spanish citizen consumes about 90 kilos of fruit per year, investing in this type of food, approximately, 139 euros per year (about 165 dollars).

In addition, fruit consumption by households increased by 1.5% in 2019, with citrus fruits (oranges and lemons, with 28% of total consumption) topping the consumption list and followed closely by bananas, kiwis and others. exotic fruits. In general, the cultivation and purchase of fruits moves more than 6.3 billion euros in many places.

Beyond these commercial data, there is a world of fruits to discover further away from the refrigerator. From both a biological and physiological point of view, fruits are the structures that allow the life of plants, thus perpetuating ecosystems as we know them. Immerse yourself with us in this space, where we tell you the types of fruits and their characteristics We assure you that, after reading these lines, you will no longer see them as mere food.

The types of plant fruits, classified

The fruit, defined as the organ from the flower that contains the seeds, is a biological structure that is believed to have appeared on the planet more than 174 million years ago Various theories speculate that these fleshy compounds arose based on evolutionary pressure, since plants had to prevent living beings from feeding on their vegetative part, and in turn, spread their seeds throughout the environment effectively.

For these reasons, it is not random that fruits are delicious to us. They are made for this, as they contain sugars such as glucose or fructose, which sweeten our palate and make us want to consume more. After all, vertebrates are nothing more than progeny transport vehicles for plants, since in a natural world, we expel the seeds of fruits in different environments with feces.

Beyond all this evolutionary and biological conglomerate, the physiology of the fruits defines which type they belong to. Up to 5 types can be distinguished according to their characteristics and certain parameters We show them all to you below.

1. According to the nature of the pericarp

The pericarp is the outer part of the fruit that surrounds the seed, or so that we understand each other better, the fleshy portion. If we imagine in our mind the cross section of a peach, From inside to outside we will see the “stone” or seed, the endocarp (the area closest to the bone), the mesocarp (the flesh of the fruit) and the epicarp, the final covering which gives the color and texture to the fruit.

Depending on the nature of the pericarp, a fruit can be dry or fleshy. A dried fruit, as its name suggests, differs from a fleshy fruit in that it contains less than 50% water in its natural composition. In this group we find almonds, hazelnuts, cashews and many other examples.

Fleshy fruits, on the other hand, have a juicy or fibrous pericarp, with abundant pulp or meat that stores water inside Even though a dried fruit (such as a raisin) has almost no water in its structure, it is still a fleshy fruit, since its content of this liquid was naturally greater than 50%.

2. According to the number of seeds it contains

The seed is defined as each of the bodies that are part of the fruit that gives rise to a new plant. In addition to being a biological structure of great interest, The number of seeds enclosed within each one of them is also an important differential factor when taking into account the types of fruits in nature.

Monospermous fruits are those that contain a single seed inside, such as the aforementioned peach, a mango or an olive. On the other hand, polysperms carry more than one seed inside, and here many more examples come to mind: bananas, oranges, watermelons, papayas, strawberries…etc. Any fruit that has “seeds,” from a botanical point of view, is polyspermous.

3. Depending on whether the seed is released (or not)

We are entering a slightly more complex terrain, since this group cannot be elucidated in such a simple way just by observing the external appearance of the fruit. From a purely botanical point of view, dehiscence is defined as the spontaneous opening of a plant structure, once it has reached maturity, to release its contents. So that, If the fruit “breaks” on its own to release the plant progeny, we are faced with a dehiscent structure

Although this is not so common within the general collective thought, an example of a dehiscent structure could be the pod of a legume, as it opens spontaneously to let the seeds fall to the ground. Depending on the way the fruit breaks, the types of dehiscence reach a dizzying number of terms: poricidal, septicidal, transversal, elastic… the variety is endless.

On the other hand, indehiscent fruits are those that cannot be opened “by magic” to release the seeds, and therefore, they have to count on breaking when falling, rotting or being preyed on by animals so that the plant progeny can germinate underground. Here, commonly consumed fruits do come to mind: watermelons, citrus fruits, bananas and, basically, all the fruits consumed in the general market.

4. According to the parts of the flower that are involved in its formation

After the fertilization of an ovule (located in the flower of the plant), some structures of the flower disappear, which dry and fall, to give rise to the fruit from the ovary. According to the parts of the flower that are involved in this formation, we can distinguish the following groups:

5. According to the number of carpels involved in its formation

Carpels are modified leaves that form the female reproductive part of the flower of angiosperm plants A set of carpels is known as a gynoecium, and this, in turn, can be composed of one or more pistils (which are the structural unit formed by the ovary, style and stigma). Beyond these complex terms, depending on the number of carpels that make up the fruit, we can find different types of them:

Of course, the classification of polycarpic fruits becomes much more complicated, since these They can be apocarpic or syncarpic, and within the latter group, open or closed Nor do we want to explain each of these groupings, as we would be incurring a botanical lesson that is too complex. The general idea of ​​this classification criterion should be the following: a peach is a monocarpic fruit, since it comes from a single carpel. On the other hand, a custard apple is polycarpic, since the sutures of the numerous carpels that make it up can be seen on the surface of the fruit.

Summary

Incredible true? It was very difficult to imagine, before reading these lines, that the world of fruit types contained such intricate physiological complexity. Human beings have a fascinating tendency to compartmentalize everything around them, whether or not it is of specific use. Even so, and from a purely utilitarian level, what matters to people who are not botanists is whether a fruit is dry or fleshy or whether it has a single seed or many, since this affects us when it comes to consuming it directly.

Beyond the shopping cart, These classifying criteria are of essential importance for the study of botany and living beings in general since certain features as specific as these allow us to create dichotomous keys, that is, tools that facilitate the classification of organisms through a series of simple steps.