Fruit? Vegetable? Herb?

[scott meissner]

You ask if a banana is a fruit or a vegetable.  

Fruits all are derived from flowers, vegetables come
from stems, leaves, or roots (or on occasion flower
buds!).  

You can tell a squash is a fruit, as it has seeds inside
flowers will make seeds.  You will not find viable 
seeds in a banana as the breeders have selected
a strain of banana that has the seeds abort early on
so that the customer does not have to chomp down on
anything tough.  But those small black specks you 
see in the banana fruit?  Those are the aborted seeds.

Hope this helps.

Scott T. Meissner
smeissne at a1.mckendree.edu