A pumpkin, from a botanist‘s perspective, is a fruit because it’s a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. A fruit is defined as “the usually edible reproductive body of a seed plant.” Pumpkins are definitely edible (not to mention delicious) and if you’ve cut into one to carve a jack-o’-lantern, you know that they’re absolutely full of seeds. But after getting into the technicality, just to categorize pumpkin, like everything else, pumpkin is a fruit! According to Encyclopedia Britannica, they've defined fruit "in its strict botanical sense" as "the fleshy or dry ripened ovary of a plant, enclosing the seed or seeds." Is pumpkin a fruit? Simply put, pumpkins are fruits. However, in culinary terms it is mostly referred to as a vegetable. Pumpkins are considered to be a fruit. Why, because it has seeds, pulp, and it grows on a flowering plant. Well, is it? Pumpkins come from a “seed-bearing ovary plant” (yeah, for real). According to the Farmer’s Almanac, a pumpkin is a fruit. And if we look at Merriam Webster’s definition of “fruit,” we can see why. So, a pumpkin is a fruit because it meets the definition of a fruit and not a vegetable. A pumpkin is a fruit, because it matches this dictionary definition of "fruit": The edible plant structure of a mature ovary of a flowering plant, usually eaten raw. The pumpkin vines flower and produce the pumpkin, so the pumpkin comes from the seed-bearing part of the plant. So what else makes a pumpkin a pumpkin? Score one for the botanists. A fruit is, “the usually edible reproductive body of a seed plant.” Pumpkins are edible, and if you’ve ever cut one open, you know it’s full of seeds, so the pumpkin is the fruit of the pumpkin vine. Stems, leaves, roots and even flower buds are considered to be vegetables. The short answer: Yes—at least, that's what scientists say. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the edible portion of plants such as leaves, stems, roots, bullbs, flowers, and tubers. Botanists consider fruits to be the portion of a plant that forms from a flower and also the part of a plant that contains seeds. Affiliate links are used on this site.