What kind of fruit is a banana?

A banana is botanically classified as a berry, even though most people simply consider it a fruit. More specifically, bananas are a type of fleshy fruit that develop from a single ovary and have a soft outer skin, fleshy middle, and many small internal seeds, which fits the botanical definition of a berry.

Despite this classification, bananas are not typically thought of as berries in everyday language because common berries (like strawberries or raspberries) don’t match the botanical definition—those are actually aggregate fruits, not true berries. The banana plant itself is a large herbaceous plant, not a tree, and the banana fruit is sometimes described as a “leathery berry”.