Note: Before calling attention to the Prunus genus of delectable summer fruits, there’s a botany lesson. We love brief glimpses of botany in food writing!

In botany, a drupe—the botanical name for stone fruit—is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (called the pit, stone, or pyrene) of a hardened endocarp with a seed (kernel) inside.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so check out the third photo.

There are two main classes of fleshy fruits: drupes and berries.

 
Yet, you can’t assume too much. Avocado is a berry: It does not have a stony endocarp (the pit or stone) covering the seed—as those who have tried growing a plant from the seed are well aware.

Drupes are members of the Rosaceae family, also called the rose family. The family includes both ornamental shrubs and trees, and those with edible fruits.

Drupes are members of the genus Prunus. Strawberries are cousins from another genus; apples, pears and quince from another; and loquats from yet another.

DRUPES YOU’VE EATEN

Drupes are popular fruits in the U.S. and Europe. The family includes:

 
Let’s move on, leaving drupes behind in favor of stone fruits, the genus’ common name.
 
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*These tree nuts are the seeds of the fruits of the tree: With these species of drupes, we eat the seed inside the pit instead of the fruit surrounding it. They are not true nuts.

†The cherries from the coffee tree enclosed the seeds, which are roasted to become coffee beans.

[1] Apricots showing a pit, a.k.a. stone. All drupes have a hard stone-like pit at the center. [2] A bowl of plums (both photos courtesy Washington State Fruit Commission). [3] The anatomy of the peach and other drupes (illustration © Armstrong).

Stone fruits are summer treats. You’ve got another month to enjoy them fresh off the tree.

Beyond eating them as hand fruit, use them to make:

 
Or:

 
In earlier times, fruits like these were “put away” in cans and jars and made into jams to enjoy until the next year’s crops came in.

Now, when you see peaches and other stone fruits in the colder months, they most likely come from Chile or elsewhere below the equator, where the seasons are reversed.

 
STONE FRUIT RECIPES

You can fine droves of stone fruit recipes all over the web. Some specialty sites include: