In
botany, a
drupe is a
fruit in which an outer fleshy part (
exocarp, or skin; and
mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the
pit or
stone) of hardened
endocarp with a
seed inside. These fruits develop from a single
carpel, and mostly from
flowers with
superior ovaries. The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified
stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.
Other fleshy fruits may have a stony enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed. These fruits are not drupes.
Some flowering plants that produce drupes are coffee, jujube, mango, olive, most palms (including date, coconut and oil palms), pistachio and all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond (in which the mesocarp is somewhat leathery), apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach, and plum.
The term stone fruit (also stonefruit[1]) can be a synonym for "drupe" or, more typically, it can mean just the fruit of the Prunus genus.
