Drupe
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In botany, a drupe is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit, stone, or pyrene) of hardened endocarp with a seed (kernel) inside. These fruits usually develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries (polypyrenous drupes are exceptions). The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower. In an aggregate fruit composed of small, individual drupes, each individual is termed a drupelet.
Other fleshy fruits may have a stony enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed, but such fruits are not drupes.
Some flowering plants that produce drupes are coffee, jujube, mango, olive, most palms (including date, coconut and oil palms), pistachio, white sapote, and all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond (in which the mesocarp is somewhat leathery), apricot, cherry, damson, nectarine, peach, and plum.
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