drupelet

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English

WOTD – 7 January 2020

Etymology

The outer layer of a blackberry is made up of little drupelets
A diagram of an aggregated fruit, showing drupelets

From drupe (“stone fruit”) +‎ -let (diminutive suffix). Compare Late Latin drupella (“small ripe olive”).

Pronunciation

Noun

drupelet (plural drupelets)

  1. (botany) One of the small drupe-like subdivisions which compose the outer layer of certain fruit such as blackberries or raspberries.
    Synonym: drupel
    It is best to pick the berries while all drupelets are of a consistent, dark red coloration.
    The passengers on the chock-full boat were packed across the deck like drupelets.
    • 1858, Asa Gray, “How Plants are Propagated or Multiplied in Numbers”, in Botany for Young People and Common Schools. How Plants Grow, a Simple Introduction to Structural Botany. , New York, N.Y.: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, & Co., →OCLC, section IV (Fruit and Seed), § 1 (Seed-vessels), paragraph 244, page 81:
      Aggregated Fruits are close clusters of simple fruits all of the same flower. The raspberry and blackberry are good examples. In these, each grain is a drupelet or stone-fruit, like a cherry or peach on a very small scale.
    • 1931, A[lbert] S[pear] Hitchcock, “Fruits and Seeds”, in Field Work for the Local Botanist, Washington, D.C.: Published by the author ; composed and printed at the Waverley Press, Inc. , →OCLC, page 22:
      The fruits of the genus Rubus (blackberry, raspberry) are aggregates of small drupes (drupelets) upon the receptacle of a single flower, each drupelet from a single pistil.
    • 2017, Bernadine C. Strik, “Growth and Development”, in Harvey K. Hall, Richard C. Funt, editors, Blackberries and Their Hybrids (Crop Production Science in Horticulture; 26), Wallingford, Oxfordshire, Boston, Mass.: CABI, →ISBN, page 29:
      Each fertilized pistil/ovule will develop into a fleshy drupelet containing one seed (a pyrene). Erect and semi-erect blackberry cultivars produce fruit with relatively large pyrenes compared to those of trailing blackberries.

Alternative forms

Related terms

Translations

References

  1. ^ “drupelet, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1897; “drupelet, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

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