THE BERRY BEGINS TO DEVELOP 
Botanically speaking, the strawberry is not a berry at all. It is what is called an accessory 
fruit, consisting of a lot of seeds on the outside of a “‘receptacle.’’ This receptacle is, in 
fact, merely an enlargement of the end of the stem. As the seeds develop, the end of the 
stem—the so-called receptacle—also develops, and soon does so very rapidly. At the 
stage shown above the seeds have developed until they quite dwarf the shriveled stamens; 
at the same time the receptacle has swelled up until the typical berry appearance is seen. 
The seeds will presently ripen and harden, and the receptacle will continue to swell until it 
forms the delicious mouthful which led the Bishop to exclaim, ‘‘Doubtless God could 
have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.” When mature, the seeds are so 
small that they are hardly felt in the mouth; yet it must not be forgotten that they alone 
are, in a botanical sense, the fruit of the plant, the enlarged stem-end, although much 
more important to man, being of little consequence to the plant, and merely an accessory 
to the seeds. Photograph by John Howard Paine. (Fig. 5.) 
