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I am Lazarus1 month ago in Angry by Choice
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A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China10 months ago in Chinleana
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Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM1 year ago in Field Notes
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Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV3 years ago in Rule of 6ix
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WE MOVED!3 years ago in Games with Words
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post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!4 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
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Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez4 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
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Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens5 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
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The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl7 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
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Lab Rat Moving House8 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
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Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs8 years ago in Disease Prone
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Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby8 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
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in The Biology Files

A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
For the jillionth time, the tomato is a fruit. That this question went to the Supreme Court is totally silly, but then to add that the justices had to consult a DICTIONARY, well, that's just insulting! You consult your friendly neighborhood botanist to answer such questions. That's what we're here for. Typical though that SCOTUS justices didn't know enough to know who to consult. Very simply they should have just contacted a botanist, someone like John Kress (the Indiana Jones of ginger) at the Smithsonian, and gotten an authoritative answer in 5 sec or so, if he was in the country. So the next time you get your tomato jam out (often called ketchup), remember the tomato is a fruit.
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2 comments:
Yes. But since "vegetable" is principally a culinary term, there's no reason that a tomato can't be both a fruit and a vegetable. And why is the controversy all about tomatoes and not about cucumbers, zucchinis, eggplants and bell peppers as well?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Botanical_Fruit_and_Culinary_Vegetables.png
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