Fruits. The word alone conjures up delicious memories of crisp apples, luscious strawberries, sweet bananas, succulent melons and juicy pineapples, to which we can now add the splendid cornucopia of tropical fruits that have taken over supermarket shelves around the world.

Fruits are one of nature's most wonderful gifts; However, providing us with a healthy food source is not the main reason why plants produce all those delicious fruits. We all know that many are inedible and some are even poisonous. Therefore, it is completely legitimate to ask what fruits are and why they exist.

As we will see, the true nature of fruits is hidden in what they contain inside: their seeds. The key role that fruits and their seeds play in the survival of each species explains the various strategies and tricks that plants have developed during the course of their evolution to achieve the dispersal of their seeds. Even requiring the intervention of wind, water, humans, animals or the explosive mechanisms of the plants themselves, these strategies are reflected in the colors, shapes and sizes of the fruits that contain and protect the seeds, as well as in the extraordinary way in which some fruits have adapted to the animals that disperse their seeds, and in turn the animals, to the fruits they enjoy.

In this pioneering collaboration, visual artist Rob Kesseler and seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy used a scanning electron microscope to obtain stunning images of a wide variety of fruits and the seeds they contain. Through extra-thin cross sections they reveal intricate interiors, berries, pods, nuts and other examples of botanical architecture and its reproductive ingenuity. The black and white microscope images have been magnificently colored by Rob Kesseler highlighting the structure and functioning of the tiny fruits and seeds, some almost invisible to the naked eye, thus creating a work of art. The largest fruits, their flowers and some of their dispersing animals have been photographed especially for this book.