Is watermelon a fruit or a vegetable?

It is a fruit that is harvested by sending boys up the trees to shake the limbs and cause the ripened watermelons to fall into nets that are deployed to catch them without bruising. Its a ceremony that is worth seeing throughout the mid and south USA during July and AUgust when the watermelon crops are ripe.

Full article

Fruit

yessss

Berry

Nu-uh.

According to wikipedia:
In botany, the berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp.

The watermelon is a pepoe (beats the hell out of me) - but what i did find is:

Vampire pumpkins and watermelons are a folk legend from the Balkans, in southeastern Europe, described by ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović. The story is associated with the Roma people of the region, from whom much of traditional vampire folklore, among other unusual legends, originated.

The belief in vampire fruit is similar to the belief that any inanimate object left outside during the night of a full moon will become a vampire. According to tradition, watermelons or any kind of pumpkin kept more than ten days or after Christmas will become a vampire, rolling around on the ground and growling to pester the living. People have little fear of the vampire pumpkins and melons because of the creatures' lack of teeth. One of the main indications that a pumpkin or melon is about to undergo a vampiric transformation (or has just completed one) is said to be the appearance of a drop of blood on its skin.

That is sad to comtemplate. A toothless vampire watermelon. I thought I had a rough life.

When it bites, does one shoot across the room?

From pages 28-29 of This is Not a Weasel by Philip Mortenson (an excellent book on nature's most confusing terms).

"In botany the word "vegetable" has very little meaning in describing plants, other than to suggest their horticulture nature or culinary use. A vegetable may be loosely defined as any plant or plant part, other than a sweet fruit, suitable for eating. But "fruit" a true scientific term, describes a very specific part of a plant---edible or not. Botanically a fruit is the ripened, sometimes fleshy, ovary of a flowering plant that surrounds its seeds."

So botanically a watermelon is a fruit, and whether one wants to also call it a vegetable is up to them. The book also goes on to list several fruits that are normally spoken of as vegetables.

Corn
Sunflower
Buckwheat
Sugar pea
Tomato
String bean
Okra
Walnut
Rice
Coconut
Chestnut
Pumpkin
Cucumber
Pepper
Acorn
Eggplant
Almond
Olive

It also explains that those little things that sit in the dimples of a strawberry, and which sometimes get caught in our teeth are actually the strawberry fruits. The big red body in which they sit is not the fruit but a receptacle for the fruits. And the pineapple is not a singular fruit but a cluster of fruits---each little button on its surface is an individual fruit.

They had you bang to rights there fm.

A watermelon is a watermelon. Who gives a shite how it's labelled as long as it's sweet and juicy and been kept cool.

Dr Huff--

Welcome to A2K.

He doesnt spoeak, he only drops in to impart wisdom. I want his hat, I need it more than he does,

Thank you. It's an interesting site.

Less of the flattery Huff.

Tell us something interesting. Something scientific ideally. Like what to invest in or what's going to win a big race.

With an avvie like that one doesn't expect polite wittering.

It's my damn alter ego. Every once in awhile I gets careless an' the *&^#$ sucker sneaks in an' takes over---really spoilin' my rep wit the guys. One time he even made me sit down at the pianner and bang out Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Talk about humiliatin'.

That's more like it.