Q.Differenciate between aggregate fruit with multiple fruit.

From Flower to Fruit: The Basic Idea

When a flower is pollinated, the ovary begins to swell and ripen into a fruit. The wall of the ovary becomes the pericarp — which itself has three layers: the outer epicarp, the middle mesocarp, and the inner endocarp. In a mango, the epicarp is the skin, the mesocarp is the juicy flesh, and the endocarp is the hard stone around the seed.

Most fruits you know — a mango, a plum, a tomato — come from a single ovary of a single flower. That's a simple fruit. But nature doesn't always follow the simple path. Sometimes, many ovaries fuse together. Sometimes, the whole inflorescence (a cluster of flowers) contributes to what we call a fruit. That's where aggregate and composite fruits come in.

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Aggregate Fruits: Many Ovaries, One Flower

Imagine a single flower that has many separate ovaries (a condition called apocarpous gynoecium). After fertilisation, each ovary develops into a tiny fruitlet. All these fruitlets sit together on the same receptacle, forming one fruit that looks like a cluster.

The classic example is the strawberry. What you eat is the swollen, fleshy receptacle. The tiny "seeds" on the surface are actually the individual fruitlets — each is a small achene (a dry, one-seeded fruit). Another example is raspberry: each little bump is a drupelet (a tiny stone fruit) that came from one ovary of the same flower.

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Composite Fruits: Many Flowers, One Fruit

Now take it a step further. Instead of one flower, consider a whole inflorescence — a cluster of many flowers. After fertilisation, the entire inflorescence, along with its bracts and receptacle, fuses into a single fruit-like structure. This is a composite fruit (also called a multiple fruit or sorosis).

The most familiar example is the pineapple. The "fruit" you buy is actually the fused ovaries, bracts, and the axis of the inflorescence. Each hexagonal "eye" on the surface corresponds to one flower. Another is the jackfruit — the large, spiky structure is a composite fruit where the fleshy parts are the perianths of many flowers fused together. Fig is a special case: the flowers are inside a hollow receptacle, and the "fruit" is that receptacle with all the tiny fruitlets inside.

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True Fruits vs. False Fruits

This distinction cuts across all fruit types.

A true fruit develops only from the ovary. The pericarp is the only part that becomes the fruit. A mango, a tomato, a grape — all true fruits. …