Is Watermelon A Berry Or A Melon? [Shattering Truth]

Names can misrepresent the nature of the fruit and vegetable, such as a Tomato is a berry and a Strawberry not, extending even to melons like Watermelon.

You can enjoy Watermelon, either raw or pickled, due to which people sometimes mistake it for a vegetable.

So, continue the article to clear the speculation about Watermelon.

What Is A Berry? [Explained In Detail]

With the word berry, you might get an imaginary idea of it being a round, small fleshy fruit holding numerous seeds.

However, it is not about shapes and sizes, but numbers can be a factor.

Berry is a botanical term used for fruits that hold their seed intact without letting it disperse.

For clarification, take Apple, which is not a berry, even if it holds numerous seeds. It is because Apple is a pome fruit not born from the ovary.

The fleshy fruit is due to the receptacle that turns into edible flesh, while the ovary holds seeds inside the flesh.

Meanwhile, the melon members like Cantaloupe, Cucumber, and Squash are berries whose edible part is solely an ex-ovary.

The list also includes Citrus family members like Lemon and Orange, which hold numerous seeds and have flesh solely from the ovary.

But they have septa segments that divide the flesh into parts and have leathery, hard rinds similar to Pumpkin. Thus, botanists refer to them as modified berries.

Is Watermelon A Melon Or A Berry?

Often, the common perspective accepts small edible fruit like Strawberries and Raspberries as a berry. But instead, bigger unexpected members belong to the category.

Here, you can say that Watermelon is both melon and berry.

A melon because the edible part of a Watermelon is sweet and juicy. It has trailing vines that hold large fruits and is from the gourd family.

Meanwhile, it is a pepo berry because of its three subdivisions as exocarp (outer skin), mesocarp (edible flesh), and endocarp (seed area).

The epicarp forms the hard rind, the mesocarp into flesh, and the endocarp holds the flat black seeds deep inside.

So if a fruit arises from a single ovary of an individual flower, a phenomenon that applies to Watermelon, you can call it a berry.

Is Watermelon A Fruit Or Vegetable?

Culinary terms can sometimes collide with botanical terms, so confusion arises. And thanks to it, many regard Watermelon as a vegetable.

People believe vegetable is not a technical term. Instead, it refers to the edible part of the plant, suitable for consumption.

So going by the definition, Watermelon technically can be a vegetable grown from seeds and harvested from the ground.

Also, Cucurbitaceae members Pumpkin, Cucumber, and Squash must have made Watermelon gain fame as a vegetable.

For this, even the Oklahoma legislature declared Watermelon a State vegetable in 2007.

However, if we look into the botanical definition and edible technique, Watermelon is a fruit, not a vegetable.