Structure of Fruit

A fruit is the ripened, fertilised ovary of a flower, and the branch of horticulture that studies fruits and their cultivation is called pomology. The wall of a fruit is called the pericarp (fruit wall), and in a fully differentiated fruit it is resolved into three distinct layers, from outside in: the epicarp (the thin outer skin), the mesocarp (the often fleshy or fibrous middle layer), and the endocarp (the innermost layer, which may be thin and papery or hard and stony depending on the fruit type). The seed sits enclosed within the space bounded by the endocarp. Not every fruit keeps all three layers distinct — in a berry, for instance, the mesocarp and endocarp fuse into one undifferentiated fleshy pulp, while in a drupe like mango all three layers remain clearly separable (a thin skin, a fleshy pulp, and a hard stony p …