Drupe

In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the pip (UK), pit (US), stone, or pyrena) of hardened endocarp with a seed (kernel) inside.

The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, woody (lignified) stone is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.

[5][7] Many drupes, with their sweet, fleshy outer layer, attract the attention of animals as a food, and the plant population benefits from the resulting dispersal of its seeds.

The endocarp (pit or stone) is sometimes dropped after the fleshy part is eaten, but is often swallowed, passing through the digestive tract, and returned to the soil in feces with the seed inside unharmed.

[citation needed] Typical drupes include apricots, olives, loquat, peaches, plums, cherries, mangoes, pecans, and amlas (Indian gooseberries).

The fruit of blackberries and raspberries comes from a single flower whose pistil is made up of a number of free carpels.

Examples of such large drupe clusters include dates, Jubaea chilensis[9] in central Chile and Washingtonia filifera in the Sonoran Desert of North America.