The term compound fruit is not used in technical botanical writing, but is sometimes used when it is not clear which of several fruit types is involved. A compound fruit is "composed of two or more similar parts".
A compound fruit may be:
- An aggregate fruit, in which one flower contains several separate ovaries, which merge during development.
- A multiple fruit, in which several flowers, each with an ovary, develop into small fruits that are clustered or fused together into a larger fruit.
- A simple fruit formed from a compound ovary.
Grapes grow in clusters, but are not compound fruits. Each grape is grown from one ovary in one flower, and each grape remains an independent fruit.
Famous quotes containing the words compound and/or fruit:
“Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)