My 6-year-old daughter Victoire wants to know why raspberries are covered with little hairs, unlike other berries.
• The hairs on raspberries are the remains of the female parts of the raspberry flower, which have not fallen away. In the flower, the female hair-like styles are collected in the centre with the male anthers arranged around the edge. Each style, topped by a stigma, is connected to one ovary, forming a pistil.
After pollination, the petals, anthers and other parts of the flower wither away, and each ovary swells to produce a segment of the final fruit. Each of these segments…
