Your banana is a berry. Your strawberry isn't.

A banana counts as a berry. A strawberry does not. That sounds backwards until you stop using the grocery-store definition.

Botanists call a berry a simple fleshy fruit that develops from one flower with a single ovary. Bananas fit. Grapes, tomatoes, and kiwis do too.12

A strawberry fails the test for a different reason. Its red flesh is the swollen flower base, not the ovary. The little dots on the outside are the real fruits, each one an achene with a seed inside. That makes the strawberry an accessory fruit.34

Kitchen language named berries by look and taste. Plant science named them by structure. Both can be useful. Only one of them puts bananas on the berry list.