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The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single flower and containing one ovary. Grapes and bananas are two common examples. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels. The seeds are usually embedded in the fleshy interior of the ovary, but there are some non-fleshy exceptions, such as peppers, that have air rather than pulp around their seeds.
Sweet, succulent blackberries are summer delicacies in the northern temperate regions. As in raspberries, they grow on shrubs known as brambles in the vast Rosaceae family bush berries. The plant is native to Europe and now grown at a commercial scale from North America, particularly in the USA, to as far as Siberia. Blackberry season generally lasts from June to September. Fresh berries are either handpicked or harvested using machines in large-scale farms. In general, the berries are ready to be harvested when they come off the receptacle easily and have turned to deep color. At the stage when they are supposed to be the most ripen and sweetest.
