Fruits are a delightful temptation for birds and mammals. In exchange for the tasty calories provided by the plants, these creatures help spread, across the world, the seeds contained in fruits, along with other byproducts of their digestion.
Discussing fruits in general terms is limiting, as the forms and techniques for dispersing these “vehicles” of seeds are various.
There are fleshy fruits such as berries, drupes, polydrupes, apples, hesperidia, and soroses. Then there are dehiscent dry fruits like follicles, legumes, pyxides, siliques, and siliquettes, as well as loculicidal, septicidal, poricidal, and toothed capsules; finally, indehiscent dry fruits: nuts, acorns, samaras, disamaras, caryopses, schizocarps, achenes, and polyachenes. Each type caters to the needs of specific plant species adapted to the environments of which they are an integral part. Consequently, certain fruits ripen in particular seasons or months, aligned with the activity of one or more fauna species, and, in times when this is not possible, fruits remain on the branches longer.
In this section, we will talk about these ingenious “inventions” of nature that ensure that flora can propagate and fauna can feed.