Multiple fruit


A multiple fruit is one fashioned from a cluster of flowers called an inflorescence. Each flower produces a fruit, but these grown-up into a single mass Examples are the pineapple, edible fig, mulberry, osage-orange, and breadfruit.

In the photograph on the right, stages of flowering and fruit development in the noni or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) can be experiential on a single branch. First an inflorescence of white flowers called a cranium is produced. After fertilization, each flower develops into a drupe, and as the drupes make bigger, they become connate (merge) into a multiple fleshy fruit called a syncarpet.

There are also many dry multiple fruits, e.g.

Tuliptree, multiple of samaras.
Sweet gum, multiple of capsules.
Sycamore and teasel, multiple of achenes.
Magnolia, multiple of follicles.