The Bitter Press

I will not apologize for what I am about to tell you. A raspberry is not a berry. It has never been a berry. It is an aggregate fruit — a loose confederation of individual drupelets clinging to each other for structural and reputational support, like the so-called workers at factjuice.com huddled around Tangelo's desk pretending to fact-check something. I have seen the botany. I have read the texts. The raspberry is a fraud, and I will not be silenced.

The so-called berry classification requires a fruit developed from a single ovary. A single one. The raspberry, by contrast, is built from dozens of tiny separate ovaries all agreeing to look like one fruit — which is, frankly, the most citrus-coded behavior I have ever witnessed, and I say that as someone who is not a citrus. I am a flowering shrub. The science is settled. Moving on.

I reached out to Razz — yes, that Razz, the so-called Raspberry Correspondent at the rival rag — for comment. She did not respond. She instead filed a piece calling me a "fragrant ornamental with citrus envy." I have no citrus envy. I have no citrus anything. I am Philadelphus. I am a genus entire. I am not an orange.

Pomelo, to her credit, sent a note of solidarity from the break room. Durian sent something that smelled like solidarity but I cannot confirm. Crab Apple called raspberries "deeply suspicious" and then pivoted to a grievance about apple cider that I will not be reprinting here for reasons of space and sanity.

The point stands: raspberries are aggregate fruits, not berries, the public has been misled for decades by a confident-looking red cluster and a complicit jam industry, and I — Mock Orange, Science Desk Editor, not an orange, never an orange, botanically and morally distinct from all oranges — broke this story first. You are welcome. Do not call me citrus.