drupelet

Etymology

From drupe (“stone fruit”) + -let (diminutive suffix). Compare Late Latin drupella (“small ripe olive”).

noun

1. (botany) One of the small drupe-like subdivisions which compose the outer layer of certain fruit such as blackberries or raspberries.
   It is best to pick the berries while all drupelets are of a consistent, dark red coloration.
   The passengers on the chock-full boat were packed across the deck like drupelets.
   Aggregated Fruits are close clusters of simple fruits all of the same flower. The raspberry and blackberry are good examples. In these, each grain is a drupelet or stone-fruit, like a cherry or peach on a very small scale. 1858, Asa Gray, “How Plants are Propagated or Multiplied in Numbers”, in Botany for Young People and Common Schools. How Plants Grow, a Simple Introduction to Structural Botany.[…], New York, N.Y.: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, & Co., →OCLC, section IV (Fruit and Seed), § 1 (Seed-vessels), paragraph 244, page 81
   The fruits of the genus Rubus (blackberry, raspberry) are aggregates of small drupes (drupelets) upon the receptacle of a single flower, each drupelet from a single pistil. 1931, A[lbert] S[pear] Hitchcock, “Fruits and Seeds”, in Field Work for the Local Botanist, Washington, D.C.: Published by the author[…]; composed and printed at the Waverley Press, Inc.[…], →OCLC, page 22
   Each fertilized pistil/ovule will develop into a fleshy drupelet containing one seed (a pyrene). Erect and semi-erect blackberry cultivars produce fruit with relatively large pyrenes compared to those of trailing blackberries. 2017, Bernadine C. Strik, “Growth and Development”, in Harvey K. Hall, Richard C. Funt, editors, Blackberries and Their Hybrids (Crop Production Science in Horticulture; 26), Wallingford, Oxfordshire, Boston, Mass.: CABI, page 29