“Botanist in sneakers.” How a scientist gives lectures on a bicycle, works in a museum, and debunks myths about plants

At the same time, from an agricultural point of view, watermelon is often classified as a vegetable because it grows on annual vines, and the technology for growing it is similar to that for growing cucumbers and zucchini.

Tomatoes are even more confusing. Are they vegetables, fruits, or berries?  Botanists emphasize that they are berries because they grow from flowers, have seeds, and thin skin. According to biological classification, the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, classifies them as berries, like eggplants and peppers. However, due to their low sugar content and use in savory dishes, we consider tomatoes to be vegetables.

Moreover, in 1893, the US Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes should be classified as vegetables because they are served for dinner rather than dessert.

So are they vegetables or berries? Why is there such confusion? And how does the botanical classification of plants differ from the culinary one?

Oleksiy Kovalenko, a research fellow at the National Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, candidate of biological sciences, renowned Ukrainian botanist and science popularizer, a man who can explain complex things in simple terms and prove that science is not boring but fascinatingly interesting, knows all about this.

The scientist, writer, museum curator, and Ukraine's leading botanical YouTuber is a guest on the program “About Science. Competently” by NASU academician Volodymyr Semynozhenko, which airs on the NASU YouTube channel.

Read more in the Ukrainian edition....