Vegetable vs Herb vs Fruit?? What’s the difference?

Have you ever given yourself a mild headache trying to understand the different connections of a family tree? Every time I try to figure out what a second cousin is, or what someone being “removed” means, I always have to google it. Even after multiple attempts to understand it, I still could not easily explain to you who my “second cousin once removed” is.

This is how it can feel trying to understand the difference between a vegetable, an herb, and a fruit, although I think it’s probably easier. Here’s a handy flowchart to simplify matters:

Vegetables are any plant grown for eating, whether that’s for the leaves (leafy greens), stalks (think rhubarb pie), roots (carrots), flowers (did you know broccoli is a flower??), or their fruit!

Though we typically think of fruit as sweet, fruit is actually a botanical reference to any edible seed structure produced by a plant from a flower. This means that yes, apples and oranges are fruits, but also any fruit produced by a plant we consider a vegetable such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins and other squash, etc. Fruit ain’t always sweet! But it does always have seeds.

Herbs are easy to understand: they are all vegetables! But herbs usually get lumped into their category because of their flavorful leaves like parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (if you aren’t instantly hearing the Simon & Garfunkel tune, you need to get on YouTube stat).

What role do these different plants have in the garden? Nicole Burke of Gardenary has a great framework explaining how herbs are the easiest plants to grow and reap the most reward, whereas fruiting plants take the most time, space, and are the most high-maintenance.

I always recommend interspersing herbs with the vegetables in your garden for several reasons:

1) Because herbs have such distinct and strong scents, they are often useful in repelling pests

2) Their aesthetic appeal endures while the other plants in the garden might be in funkier stages of growth

3) You can harvest herbs almost all year in North Texas!

If you want to get started growing but are intimidated, herbs are a great place to begin. Once you are comfortable with the process, you can grow into bigger vegetables and fruit!

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