Avocados Are Berries and Bananas Are Herbs

The world of botany often reveals surprising secret identities for the foods we eat daily. While many people have heard that a tomato is technically a fruit, the classifications get even more peculiar when you look at other common produce. The creamy avocado and the familiar banana both defy our common assumptions, falling into scientific categories that seem completely counterintuitive at first glance but are based on the specific ways these plants grow and produce their fruit.

The avocado's claim to berry-hood is based on the strict botanical definition. A true berry is a fleshy fruit that develops from the single ovary of a single flower and contains one or more seeds. The avocado fits this description perfectly: its tough skin is the outer layer (exocarp), the creamy flesh is the middle layer (mesocarp), and it encloses a single large seed. This structure makes it a single-seeded berry, placing it in the same botanical family as grapes, blueberries, and even cucumbers. By contrast, fruits we commonly call berries, like strawberries and raspberries, are technically aggregate fruits because they form from a single flower with multiple ovaries.

Meanwhile, the banana plant's identity crisis comes down to its stem. A tree is defined by its woody trunk that grows thicker over time through secondary growth. A banana plant, despite its towering height, has no wood. What appears to be a trunk is actually a "pseudostem," a sturdy, trunk-like structure formed by the tightly packed, overlapping bases of its leaves. This classifies the banana as