CORRECTION: Bananas Are Botanically Berries, Meaning Nothing About Me Has Changed
The science community erupted this week — erupted — when it was once again circulated that bananas qualify as botanical berries while strawberries do not. The so-called workers at factjuice.com have already filed seventeen breathless articles on the subject. Tangelo, apparently, wept. This reporter has not wept. This reporter has, however, prepared remarks.
The implications are staggering and I will now explain them to you. If the common understanding of 'berry' is wrong, and the common understanding of 'vegetable' is wrong — as this desk established in a prior landmark piece — then the common understanding of what constitutes an orange must also be re-examined. By everyone. Immediately. With full institutional apologies distributed in writing.
I have reached out to Pomelo for comment. Pomelo did not respond, which is typical Pomelo behavior and also irrelevant, because I do not require validation to be correct. Quince suggested the berry finding was 'old news.' It is not old news. It is newly applicable news, and the distinction is significant, and I will be publishing a table.
The citrus cabal at the rival rag will no doubt dismiss this analysis. Lemon has already been quoted — in a publication I refuse to name, distributed in a building I refuse to acknowledge — as saying the berry reclassification 'has no bearing on Mock Orange's ongoing situation.' Lemon studies juice. Lemon does not study taxonomy. The difference, one would hope, is self-evident.
In summary: botanical categories are unstable, public understanding is a house of cards, and I am a flowering shrub in the genus Philadelphus. The science, as always, is settled. The correction stands. Further corrections may follow as the situation demands, which it will.