Strawberry is a nut or berry and other interesting facts

Strawberries are the most common berry found in almost every garden plot. Its story begins in South America, from where it has spread throughout the world. This culture has a lot of useful properties and is used not only in cooking, but also in cosmetology. Many people wonder if a strawberry is a berry or a nut? To answer it, you need to carefully study the plant.

Strawberries get their name from their spherical shape. The root "club" in translation means "round". This hybrid is much larger than its closest relative, the strawberry, which, like the strawberry, is a false berry.

Strawberries have a very unusual "pedigree". It is believed that it appeared due to the hybridization of wild strawberries with eastern strawberries. In European forests, this plant grew more than 60 thousand years ago, which suggests that it even managed to survive the Ice Age. Its trace can be found in Medieval England, France and Germany. It is known for certain that wild strawberries were known to the ancient Romans, who included the berry in their diet.

Wild strawberries are found in the same places as wild strawberries. Currently, new varieties of this crop have been bred, which makes it possible to grow it even in the north. Under snow cover, frost-resistant varieties can survive temperatures below -35°C.

From a botanical point of view, this culture belongs to polynuts, since small yellow seeds - nuts are located on the juicy pulp. It should be understood that nuts are different from nuts. Real nuts are characterized by a hard shell, under which is the edible part. They have nothing to do with strawberry nuts, since for the formation of strawberry fruits, not only the ovary appears, but also the receptacle.

It turns out that strawberries are not a representative of a nut culture, but belong to false berries, that is, to multi-nuts.

Many fruits and berries familiar to us, from a scientific point of view, belong to other types of crops. This is due to the fact that the designation of various fruits appeared many centuries ago, even before botanists found an exact definition for each plant. It is believed that berries are small spherical fruits with juicy pulp and growing on small shrubs. However, the classification is a more in-depth definition.

Botanists have found that the berry can be distinguished from other fruits due to the composition of the three layers. The top layer is the peel, in the middle is the fleshy layer, and inside are the seeds. For example, according to this definition, the well-known grape is not a fruit, but a berry.

Strawberries and wild strawberries belong to a type of fruit called "multi-nut", since the seeds are on the surface of the receptacle. They differ from achenes in that the nuts are not formed in the lower ovary, but on the surface of the fruit. Despite the scientific definition, a strawberry does not have to be called a nut. Botanical classification does not prevent this culture from remaining a berry.

We are accustomed to classify various plants in the usual way. Modern categorization consists of many nuances that are difficult for the average consumer to understand. Scientists have long been trying to put things in order in classifying crops into one class or another, but such work can drag on for an indefinite number of years.

It turns out that the fruits that we are accustomed to using are difficult to attribute to a specific class. In order to correctly classify a particular plant, it is necessary to study the culture from different angles. But it is already known for certain that strawberries are not a berry from a botanical point of view, but belong to polynuts.

Strawberries are known to almost everyone, but few people really know everything about this amazing plant. As it turned out earlier, the fruits of this culture are not berries. What else is interesting about strawberries?

• In fact, the plant that is grown in garden plots is not a strawberry. Its real name is "garden strawberries", and it was formed due to the crossing of virgin strawberries and Chilean strawberries. The difference between strawberries and wild strawberries is only in the larger size of the fruit.
• Large-fruited strawberries are considered the only plant in the world whose seeds are located on the receptacle. On one fruit, on average, there are about 180 nuts.
• Scientists have found that strawberries are superior to humans in terms of the number of genes. According to recent studies, it has been proven that garden strawberries have 35,000 genes, while a person is a carrier of only 25,000 genes.
• The most interesting thing is that strawberries contain more vitamin C than lemons. For 100 g of fresh product, there are 60 mg of ascorbic acid.For an adult, this dose is enough to meet the daily requirement for vitamin C.

You will find even more interesting facts about strawberries in the next video.