Since more than half of the entities within this tool are fruits or fruit parts, a suite of features was designed to help the user narrow down their choices within this group of plant parts. If you are not sure whether or not your specimen is a fruit, please consult the plant part - fruit page.

Fruit outline

Fruit outline shape should be determined by laying your specimen on a flat surface in whichever way it most naturally lies. The outline shape would be what would result if you traced around the specimen while it was laying flat on a surface. Some objects may be three-dimensional and round and therefore not able to lay completely flat. In this case, simply lay the fruit on a surface however it would naturally lay. To use a pear as an example: one could set a pear up on its end, resulting in a round outline shape, but the way this key was designed, you should lay the pear on its side, so the outline shape would be, as one would expect for a pear, pear-shaped.

Generally, any stem a fruit may have will not be considered as part of the outline shape.

Here are the shapes you may choose from:

Round - circular or nearly so