BEERY, Bacea, the term employed in botany to designate a description of fruit more or less fleshy and juicy, and not opening when ripe. The inner layers of the pericarp (q.v.) are of n fleshy or succulent texture, sometimes even consisting of mere cells tilled witt juice. whilst the outer layers arc harder,- and sometimes even woody. The seeds are immersed in the pulp. A B. may be one-celled, or it may be divided into a number of cells or compartments, which, however. are united together not merely in the axis. but from the axis to the rind. It is a common description of fruit, and is found hi many different natural families, and both of exogenous and endogenous plants. As examples. may be mentioned the fruits of the gooseberry, currant, vine, barberry, bil berry, belladonna, arum, bryony, and asparagus, which, altlionfsh agreeing in their struct ure. possess widely different properties. Some of them, which are regarded as more strictly berries, have the calyx adherent to the ovary, and the placentas—from which the seeds derive their nourishment—parietal, that is, connected with the rind, as the goose berry and currant; others, as the grape..have the ovary free, and the placentas in the
center of the fruit.—The orange and other fruits of the same family, having a thick rind dotted with numerous oil-glands, and quite distinct from the pulp of the fruit. receive the name hesperialinin; the fruit of the pomegranate, which is very peculiar in the man ner of its division into cells, is also sometimes distinguished from berries of theordinary structure by the name balarmta. Sec POMEGRANATE. Fruits like that of the water lily, which at first contain a juicy pulp, Lnd afterwards, when ripe, are filled with a dry pith, are sometimes designated berry-cop:odes. gourds, also, which at first have 3 to it compartthents, but when ripe, generally consist of only one compartment, are dis tinctively designated by the term pep°, peponium, or pepwthla, to which, however, gourd may lie considered equivalent.