Although ‘fruiting’ is a verb, like flowering and flower budding, which makes it pretty clear to this non-botanist, citizen scientist, that these are developmental processes with observable beginnings and endings that can overlap where there are 2 or more developing flowers and fruits, I realize in this discussion that the addition of the “ing” suffix to each of those phenological phases doesn’t lead some other users to a similar understanding.
Clearing up the definition for me, and changing my understanding a little, of the definition of fruiting is the wording about the fruiting by the USA National Phenology Network in its document, 'Phenophase Primer for Plants: Understanding Plant Phenophases for Nature’s Notebook (
June 2017 DRAFT
USA-NPN Education & Engagement Series 2016-002) available for download (at the time of my posting this comment) at https://www.usanpn.org/files/npn/reports/USA-NPN-PhenophasePrimer_Section1-June2017.pdf. Particularly helpful was the following:
"When to stop reporting “yes” for the “Ripe
fruit” phenophase
The initial step would be to determine if the lingering fruits on the plant have dropped all their seeds or had their seeds removed—leaving empty hulls, capsules, pods, or skins and rinds of fleshy fruits (Images 1, 2, 5, 7, 8). If seeds are no longer present, the fruits are no longer viable and the observer should report “no” for “Fruits” and “Ripe fruits”. For species such as those in rows 2-3, persistent, seedless, old fruit might be present along with fresh fl owers and new fruit (Images 5 and 3, respectively), and sometimes remain on the plant well into the next season (Image 8). In tall plants, if fruits are too high to be inspected, the observer will have to report “?” for these phenophases once they suspect the seeds might have dropped or been removed from the fruits.
But what of those persistent fruits still holding onto their seeds? For capsules and pods, the drier fruits, that retain seeds, the observer should continue to report “yes” for the “Fruits” and “Ripe fruits” phenophases until all the seeds have been removed from the plant.
And what of fleshy fruits, such as berries and rose hips, that remain on the plant and begin deteriorating with no clear endpoint for reporting “yes”? It depends. An observer might think about it from an animal’s or bird’s perspective:
• Continue to report “yes” for “Fruits” and “Ripe fruits” as long as these fruits seem plump, edible and appealing to wildlife (Images 9-10).
• But—when the fruits begin to dry up and deteriorate, it is questionable whether to consider them as “Fruits” and “Ripe fruits”. Once they seem inedible or unappealing to wildlife (Image 11), report “no” for these phenophases and place a note in the comments section that deteriorated fruit persists on the plant" (p78; emphasis mine).
Using that definition of fruiting, or ‘“Fruits” and “Ripe fruits,”’ when selecting a phenological annotation, following is an example of Allium tricoccum I now consider to still be in the fruiting stage and to be past the phase with its having dehisced fruit. The ripe fruit is not really fruiting in my understanding of the word as a verb but the whole fruit with its fleshy part remains. See https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/186205016 .