CHAPTER XVIII 



FRUITS AND SEEDS AND THEIR USES 



I — b 



290. True Fruits and False Fruits. — We have seen that 

 the fruit of an angiosperm consists of a fruit coat which 

 encloses one or more seeds ; often also there is more or lesS' 

 tissue between the seeds. The fruits of many angiosperms, 

 like those of the cucumber and the bean, contain more than 

 one seed each ; the fruits of many others are one-seeded. 

 All the members of the grass family, for example, to which 

 the corn belongs, have one- 

 seeded fruits ; so have the 

 members of the composite 

 family, which includes dan- 

 delions and thistles. In the 

 composites and in most 

 grasses, as in the com, the 

 fruit coat is thin and fits so 

 closely about the seed that 

 the whole fruit looks much 

 like a seed. Our common 

 nuts, too, are one-seeded 



fruits. The shell of a hazel nut, a walnut, a hickory nut, 

 a chestnut, or an acorn is the fruit coat ; the part inside, 

 which we eat, is the seed. 



A fruit which, like all those mentioned so far, has been 

 formed from the ovary alone (^vith its enclosed seed or seeds) , 

 is spoken of as a true fruit, because the word fruit is some- 

 times applied to a thing that is, more than a true fruit. An 

 example of the latter sort is the red " fruit " that we call a 



283 



Fig. 165. — A, the false fruit of the 

 strawberry. B, a lengthwise section 

 of the same ; a, swollen end of the 

 pedicel ; b, one of the small, hard, 

 true fruits ; c, the sepals. 



