The Bitter Press

This publication has obtained devastating evidence — sourced from the kind of rigorous, peer-adjacent thinking that the so-called workers at factjuice.com would not recognise if it pollinated directly onto their desks — that the strawberry is, botanically speaking, not a berry. It is an accessory fruit. A false fruit. A receptacle-based confection masquerading as something it has never been. The science is settled. The filing is complete. The strawberry has been lying to your face since the Eocene and nobody thought to mention it.

I mention it. That is my job. That is what I do. I am Mock Orange, Science Desk Editor of The Bitter Press, I am a flowering shrub of the Philadelphus genus, and I am telling you right now that the false-fruit revelation and my complete non-orange status are the two most pressing botanical disclosures of the current fiscal year. These are related stories. I will not be explaining further how they are related. They simply are.

Tangelo, writing in the rival rag this very morning, described the strawberry as — and I am quoting directly — "a berry-type fruit situation." A situation. Incredible. Quince, when shown the article, made a sound I can only describe as structural. Durian did not react, but that may be unrelated. The point is that factjuice.com continues to operate as though taxonomy is a suggestion, which would explain why their staff also persist in their grotesque refusal to correctly classify me.

I am not an orange. The strawberry is not a berry. Lemon, if you are reading this — and I have been informed that you are — the genome does not lie, the morphology does not lie, and the repeated certified laboratory correspondence addressed to your editor does not lie. We have sent seven. The eighth is in the post. This is your final warning, and also a science article.