It is easy to understand this question backward. Answers have been provided to this question that better answer the question “What fruits do we think to be vegetables?”.
To truly understand the presented question, we need to know what constitutes a fruit and what constitutes a vegetable. In Botany, no classification indicates a vegetable. Botany does describe what constitutes a fruit—the growth formed by the ovary of a flowering plant after flowering. There is also the consideration that a “fruit” contains seeds This means that many of the “vegetables” we buy from the store and eat in our meals are fruits. Some examples are tomato, squash, green beans and peppers. These fruits grow from the ovary of the plant after flowering.
In Botany, an accessory fruit is one that develops the edible flesh from tissue adjacent to the ovary rather than from the ovary itself. Examples are strawberries, mulberries, pineapples, pears, apples, and common figs. In Botany, any portion of the plant not defined as fruit is part of the vegetation of the plant, therefore vegetable. This includes fleshy portions generally considered “fruit” but not developed from the ovary of the flower of the plant.
Thus accessory fruit can technically be considered botanically vegetable tissue. In this view, strawberries, mulberries, pineapples, pears, apples and common figs can be said to be “vegetables” that we eat as “fruits”.
If this is considered too much of a stretch of credulity, please consider rhubarb. Rhubard looks like red celery. It is used because of its fruit-like flavor in pies. The stalk is definitely vegetable tissue, yet we eat it as fruit with a vegetable-type accessory fruit in the form of Strawberry-Rhubarb pie.
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