Is Pumpkin a Fruit or a Vegetable?

Every fall, pumpkins take center stage… But here’s a fun twist that might mess with your mental produce aisle: pumpkins are technically fruits.

That’s right. According to Joe Masabni, Ph.D., a vegetable specialist and professor at Texas A&M, pumpkins fall squarely into the “fruit” category from a botanical standpoint. Why? Because fruits are what develop from the flower of a plant—and pumpkins do just that.

“Anything that starts from a flower is a fruit,” Masabni explains, turning our grocery store assumptions upside down.

So why do so many of us file pumpkins under “vegetables” instead?

It comes down to how we eat them, not how they grow. “We categorize foods by whether we eat them as a dessert, salad, or part of a meal,” Masabni said. It’s the same reason people commonly think cucumbers or tomatoes are vegetables. We slice them into salads or roast them with dinner—no sugar, no dessert plate—so we mentally label them as veggies.

Pumpkins are a bit of a culinary wildcard, though. Some people throw chunks of pumpkin into savory stews, others purée it into sweet, spiced pies. That mix of uses only adds to the confusion.

So, what exactly is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable, scientifically speaking? It all comes down to the flower.

Vegetables like lettuce, for example, never grow from a flower that turns into something edible. You harvest the leaves, and that’s it. Pumpkins, on the other hand, start as flowers that—after a little help from pollinators like bees—transform into the bright orange gourds we know and love.

This same flower-to-fruit process also applies to some other unexpected “vegetables” like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini, squash, peppers, string beans, corn, and okra. Yep, they’re all technically fruits too.

Does it matter at the end of the day? Not really. Your pumpkin pie isn’t going to taste any different now that you know it’s a fruit.

But it is a great conversation starter for your next fall get-together. Maybe bust it out after dessert (fruit-based or otherwise).

“The fruit and vegetable debate is a fun one,” Masabni said. “At the end of the day, we want people to enjoy these plants as gardeners and at the dinner table.”

So now when you’re sneaking that second slice of pie, you can say you’re eating your fruit…