Berry

Berry, Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de, 1798-1870, wife of the French prince, Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry; daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies. She went into exile from France after the overthrow of King Charles X, her father-in-law. Returning secretly in 1832, she organized a small, unsuccessful uprising in an attempt to win the throne for Berry's posthumous son, Henri, later known as the comte de Chambord. For these activities she was imprisoned. However, when it became obvious that the duchesse was pregnant, she was forced to reveal her secret second marriage to an Italian count. This marriage alienated her royalist supporters, and the French government released her from prison.

Berry, Charles Ferdinand, duc de, 1778-1820, younger son of Charles, comte d'Artois (later Charles X of France). He served in the prince de Condé's army against the French Revolution. His assassination during the reign of King Louis XVIII—an attempt to extinguish the Bourbon line—gave the ultraroyalists the opportunity to turn Louis XVIII against the liberals. Berry's posthumous son was Henri, comte de Chambord.

Berry, Chuck (Charles Edward Anderson Berry), 1926-, American rock music guitarist, singer, and songwriter, b. San Jose, Calif. He was brought up in St. Louis, Mo., where he still lives. Berry is widely regarded as one of the leading pioneers of rock music, having blended the blues with country music and added a rhythm-and-blues beat, and he is thought by many to be the inventor of the rock music form. His distinctive playing of the electric guitar and his witty lyrics were a major inspiration for the English pop renaissance and for a wide variety of other rock musicians. A dynamic performer, he also became known for his signature crouching and gliding "duck walk." Berry produced a string of hits in the late 1950s, including Maybellene, Rock and Roll Music, Roll Over Beethoven, and Johnny B. Goode. In 1962 he was sentenced to two years in prison on the charge of transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. His creative output subsequently dwindled and he cut his last record in 1981, butt he continued to be an active and popular performer into the 21st cent. Berry was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

Berry, Martha McChesney, 1866-1942, American educator and philanthropist, b. near Rome, Ga., Ph.D. Univ. of Georgia, 1920. Determined to provide educational opportunities for underprivileged mountain children, Berry opened (1902) a log-cabin school with five pupils. She developed this at Mt. Berry, Ga., into an institution comprising four units: a boys' school (1902), a girls' school (1909), Berry College (1926; coeducational), and a model practice school.

Berry, former province, central France. Bourges, the capital, and Châteauroux are the chief towns. Cattle are raised on the Champagne Berrichonne, a semiarid plateau that covers most of the region. The valleys of the Indre and the Cher rivers are rich farming areas. A part of Roman Aquitaine, Berry was made a county in the 8th cent., and was purchased (1101) by the French crown. In 1360 it was made a duchy. It was held as an appanage by various royal princes until 1601, when it reverted to the crown.

berry: see fruit.

Gordy, Berry, Jr., 1929-, African-American music-industry executive, b. Detroit. After stints in the army and as a professional boxer, Gordy opened a Detroit record store and began to write songs and produce records. He founded (1959) Motown Records, and its success made him the first African-American owner of a top recording company. Gordy transformed the company into a music empire, developing the "Motown sound," a pop-, gospel-, and rhythm-and-blues-inflected crossover version of soul that revolutionized American popular music in the 1960s. His first big hit, "Shop Around" (1961) by Smokey Robinson (with whom Gordy wrote several songs) and the Miracles, was followed by hundreds of chart-topping singles by various artists. Gordy discovered or developed many of the era's great performers—including also the Four Tops, the Temptations, Jackie Wilson, Mary Wells, Martha Reeves, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five, and Diana Ross and the Supremes—backing them with a talented staff of in-house songwriters, producers, and musicians. In the 1970s Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles and began producing films, notably Lady Sings the Blues (1972) starring Diana Ross. He sold Motown in 1988, the year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Simple, fleshy fruit that usually has many seeds (e.g., the banana, tomato, or cranberry). The middle and inner layers of the fruit wall often are not distinct from each other. Any small, fleshy fruit is popularly called a berry, especially if it is edible. Raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are not true berries, but rather aggregate fruits—fruits that consist of multiple smaller fruits. The date is a one-seeded berry whose stone is hard nutritive tissue.

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(born March 19, 1848, Monmouth, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 13, 1929, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. frontiersman. He worked in the 1870s as a police officer in Wichita and Dodge City, Kan., where he befriended the gunmen Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson. He later worked as a guard for Wells, Fargo & Company. By 1881 he had moved to Tombstone, Ariz., living as a gambler and a saloon guard. His brother Virgil became town marshal, and his other brothers (James, Morgan, and Warren) bought real estate and businesses. A feud with the Clanton gang ended in a shootout at the O.K. Corral in which three of the Clanton gang were killed. In 1882 Morgan was murdered, and in retaliation Wyatt, Warren, and some friends killed two men they suspected of the crime. Accused of murder, Wyatt fled to Colorado and later settled in California. Stuart Lake's Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal (1931), written with Earp's collaboration, portrayed him as a fearless lawman.

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(born March 19, 1848, Monmouth, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 13, 1929, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. frontiersman. He worked in the 1870s as a police officer in Wichita and Dodge City, Kan., where he befriended the gunmen Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson. He later worked as a guard for Wells, Fargo & Company. By 1881 he had moved to Tombstone, Ariz., living as a gambler and a saloon guard. His brother Virgil became town marshal, and his other brothers (James, Morgan, and Warren) bought real estate and businesses. A feud with the Clanton gang ended in a shootout at the O.K. Corral in which three of the Clanton gang were killed. In 1882 Morgan was murdered, and in retaliation Wyatt, Warren, and some friends killed two men they suspected of the crime. Accused of murder, Wyatt fled to Colorado and later settled in California. Stuart Lake's Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal (1931), written with Earp's collaboration, portrayed him as a fearless lawman.

Learn more about Earp, Wyatt (Berry Stapp) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Charles Edward Anderson Berry

(born Oct. 18, 1926, St. Louis, Mo., U.S. ) U.S. singer-songwriter. Though first interested in country music, in the early 1950s Berry led a blues trio that played in black nightclubs around St. Louis. In 1955 he traveled to Chicago and made his first hit record, “Maybellene,” which was soon followed by “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music,” and “Roll Over, Beethoven.” He was one of the first to shape big-beat blues into what came to be called rock and roll (see rock music) and to achieve widespread popularity with white audiences. After two trials tainted by racist overtones, in 1959 he began a five-year prison sentence for immoral behaviour. In 1972 he achieved his first number one hit, “My Ding-A-Ling.” He continued to perform into the 1990s. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were among the many rock bands greatly influenced by Berry.

Learn more about Berry, Chuck with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Charles Edward Anderson Berry

(born Oct. 18, 1926, St. Louis, Mo., U.S. ) U.S. singer-songwriter. Though first interested in country music, in the early 1950s Berry led a blues trio that played in black nightclubs around St. Louis. In 1955 he traveled to Chicago and made his first hit record, “Maybellene,” which was soon followed by “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music,” and “Roll Over, Beethoven.” He was one of the first to shape big-beat blues into what came to be called rock and roll (see rock music) and to achieve widespread popularity with white audiences. After two trials tainted by racist overtones, in 1959 he began a five-year prison sentence for immoral behaviour. In 1972 he achieved his first number one hit, “My Ding-A-Ling.” He continued to perform into the 1990s. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were among the many rock bands greatly influenced by Berry.

Learn more about Berry, Chuck with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Historical region and former province, central France. It was originally inhabited by the Bituriges Cubi, who opposed Vercingetorix. Under Roman rule it was part of Aquitania Prima. A countship in the Carolingian period, it fell to the French crown in the 12th century. When Aquitaine was acquired by Henry II of England, Berry became a matter of dispute between England and France. As a duchy, at one time it came under Jean de France, duke de Berry, an important patron of the arts. It returned to France in 1601 and remained a province until 1790.

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The word berry has two meanings: one based on a botanical definition, the other on common identification. True (botanical) berries are a simple fruit having seeds and pulp produced from a single ovary. In common parlance, however, berries are more broadly recognized as small, round or semi-oblong, usually brightly colored, sweet or sour fruit.

True berries

In botany, the berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and one or more carpels within a thin covering and fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary. Examples of botanical berries include the tomato, grape, lychee, loquat, lucuma, plantain, avocado, persimmon, eggplant, guava, uchuva (ground cherry), and chili pepper.

Modified berries

The fruit of citrus, such as the orange, kumquat and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium.

The fruit of cucumbers and their relatives are modified berries called "pepoes". A plant that bears berries is referred to as bacciferous.

True berries are distinguishable from false berries like blueberries and cranberries for which the fruit is formed from other parts of the flower, not just the ovary. Also not true berries, aggregate fruits like raspberries are collections of small fruits, and accessory fruits like strawberries are formed from parts of the plant other than the flower. As explained below, none of these is a true berry.

Common usage

In common parlance, berry refers to any small, sweet, juicy and brightly-colored fruit. By contrasting in color with their background, berries are more attractive to animals that eat them, aiding in the dispersal of the plant's seeds. Most berries are edible, but some are poisonous.

Berry colors are due to natural pigments synthesized by the plant. Medical research has uncovered medicinal properties of pigmented polyphenols, such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, and tannins and other phytochemicals localized mainly in berry skins and seeds. Berry pigments are usually antioxidants and thus have oxygen radical absorbance capacity ("ORAC") that is high among plant foods. Together with good nutrient content, ORAC distinguishes several berries within a new category of functional foods called "superfruits", a rapidly-growing multi-billion dollar industry that began in 2005 and is identified by DataMonitor as one of the top 10 food categories for growth in 2008.

A 2007 report combined four criteria — nutrient content, antioxidant qualities, medical research intensity and commercial success — giving an approximate rank of commercial activity for six exotic superfruits, including three berries — wolfberry, sea buckthorn and açaí — as the highest rated.

From 2007-8 medical literature discussing berry nutrients and potential health properties, grape, strawberry, cranberry and blueberry are the most favored research topics among berries currently.

Not a botanical berry

Many "berries" are not actual berries by the scientific definition, but fall into one of these categories:

• False berries like blueberry and cranberry, are epigynous, made from a part of the plant other than a single ovary.
• Compound fruit, which includes:
• Aggregate fruit are multiple fruits with seeds from different ovaries of a single flower, such as blackberry, raspberry, and boysenberry
• Multiple fruit, being the fruits of separate flowers, packed closely together. The mulberry, for example, is essentially like a cluster of grapes, but tiny and compressed into one "berry"
• Other accessory fruit, where the edible part is not generated by the ovary, such as the strawberry for which the seed-like achenes are actually the "fruit" derived from the ovary.

		Botanical parlance
		True berry	Pepo	Hesperidium	False berry (Epigynous)	Aggregate fruit	Multiple fruit	Other accessory fruit
Common parlance	Berry	Blackcurrant, Redcurrant, Gooseberry			Cranberry, Blueberry	Blackberry, Raspberry, Boysenberry	Mulberry	Strawberry
	Not a berry	Tomato, Eggplant, Guava, Lucuma, Chili pepper, Pomegranate, Avocado, Kiwifruit, Grape	Pumpkin, Gourd, Cucumber, Melon	Orange, Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit	Banana	Hedge apple	Pineapple, Fig	Apple, Peach, Cherry, Green bean, Sunflower seed

Notes

See also

• List of fruits
• Epigynous berry
• Accessory fruit
• Aggregate fruit
• Multiple fruit

External links

• The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens - Description of berries
• Encarta.msn.com - Differentiation between true berries, pepos, and hesperidia
• United States National Berry Crops Initiative
• Berry Health Benefits Network - Scientists working on the health properties of berries