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Friday, July 30, 2010

Only God can make a tree, but I'm in charge of seeds and weeds!




Whether you tend a garden or not, you are the gardener of your own being, the seed of your destiny.

When we planted our garden we wanted a variety of vegetables that we could enjoy either fresh from the garden or to preserve to have until the next planting season.

But what did we really plant?  Fruit or vegetables? 

To really figure out  if it is a fruit or vegetable, you need to know what makes a fruit a fruit, and a vegetable a vegetable. The big question to ask is, DOES IT CONTAIN SEEDS?
Believe it or not. the question of whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the 1883 Tariff Act on imported produce. The court did acknowledge, however, that, botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.

So, what do we have in our garden . . . tomatoes, peppers, green beans, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers and zucchini.

By the botanical definition of fruit, the majority of our garden is fruit. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers and zucchini all contain seeds so are technically fruits.

The only vegetables we have in our garden are the radishes and lettuce.  Vegetables are typically the leaf, stem, or root of a plant.

Why do some plants have seeds?  Fruits are the means by which many plants disseminate seeds. They exploit animals as a means for seed dispersal, and many animals (including humans to some extent) have become dependent on fruits as a source of food.  Yep, even the plant world is taking advantage of you. 


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