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Presenting 'Fruit of the Womb: The Botanical Classification of Fruit'

Good morning! I'm really happy to share with you my latest piece, called "Fruit of the Womb: The Botanical Classification of Fruit". This piece communicates the floral origins of fruit, showing how some floral parts morph and change during maturation to form the flesh, seeds, or other parts of fruit. The most exciting part of this piece, in my opinion, is the demonstration of how some flowers become the foods that many of us don't traditionally consider as fruit! It was one thing to learn that tomatoes are technically fruit, but nuts? Wheat?! Even learning about the fact that strawberries aren't technically fruit but belong to a family of "false fruits" - doing this exercise really showed me how little I know about botany and how we bring fruit from farm to table!


The inspiration for creating this poster came at the end of summer during a dinnertime conversation. I was enjoying a salad with some friends and someone brought up the fact that a tomato is "technically" a fruit. We started a discussion about this fact, and I was inspired to really get to the bottom of why tomatoes are fruits. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a few weeks worth of botanical reading. I spent the following weeks diving and combing through botanical literature, reading up on the structures and anatomies of flowers, the process of maturation, how fruit are developed and then classified based on this maturation and the final product of their fruit. I learned about some new areas of study - pomoly (the study of fruit and its cultivation), carpology (the study of seeds and fruit), and floriculture (the more industrial sector of flowers). The more I read, the more intrigued I became, and as time went by I was inspired to synthesize my findings and visualize them into a beautiful and engaging illustration. The final piece you see today is a result of my findings, and pretty much shows the general arrangement of fruit into four general categories and how abouts they get there from their floral origins. It was a real labour of love, and took many many weeks of reiterative design and strategic thinking. I've included some examples below of the drafts and earlier ideas I had before blowing this out to a more impactful and enriching piece.

Special shout out to reddit.com/r/botany who helped out with some of my questions regarding fruits and their components. As a newfound armchair botanist, their expertise and insight was instrumental to the quality assessment I gave this poster and they really helped bring the final poster to life with their corrections and enthusiasm. Much appreciated!

If you'd like to purchase some prints of this piece, a digital file for your own collection, or other associated merchandise with this piece, please check out my online web-store!



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