a short excerpt (fair use under copyright law) from the article,
"Berry Time", by Steve Howe, "Tropical Fruit News", September 1998,
32(9): 10, 13. Published by Rare Fruit Council International,
Miami, Florida; http://www.gate.net/~tfnews

The topic of the excerpt below is blackberries, those delicious berries
that grow on amazingly thorny plants. Picking wild blackberries, or at
least nutritionally significant quantities of them, is a major challenge
because of the far-too-numerous sharp thorns, the dense thickets they
form (with undergrowth and plant debris that provides home to biting and
stinging insects), and to some of the other "anti-social" :-) vines that
may grow with them: poison oak, poison ivy.

From p. 10:

"Bird-berry Evolution

It is obvious to a blackberry-picking biologist that this berry plant
wants no mammal to eat its fruit and distribute its seed. The thorny
attitude and small thin-skinned juicy composite fruits are the perfect example
of a bird-distributed seed. It wants to be quickly scarified in the gut
of the many berry-eating bird species, and deposited in a fertile packet
a flying distance from the parental plants, and quickly, before
the tiny thin-hulled seed are damaged. The milling, crushing teeth of mammals
as well as their lengthy slow digestive tract would not do. The equally
slow ground transportation [of mammals] would not take the genetic
material far enough, quick enough for the evolution plans of the
bramble fruits...

It is the many species of berry-eating birds that selected and maintain the
separate species, subspecies and individual varieties of these wonderful
thorny prizes [bramble fruits] which lure and bribe air transportation
just to insure that diversity to keep the bird and berry evolution
wheel rolling fast and far."

I have posted the above as some here may find it of interest. Also, some
fruitarians claim that, in effect, "fruit wants to be eaten", which
in context is interpreted as "fruit wants you (humans) to eat it".
The latter idea, that all fruit wants to be eaten by humans, is
simplistic and incorrect. Rather, a fruit "wants to be eaten" by
the optimal animals for seed dispersal. To achieve that end, fruits
contain natural toxins to protect the fruit from insect attack,
control which species eats it, how much is eaten at feedings, and
finally to serve as natural fungicides when the seed sprouts after
being distributed in animal droppings. Of course, we humans - with our
technology - can overcome the various natural restraints and produce enough
blackberries to gorge ourselves on them. Whether that is really good for us,
in the long run, is uncertain.

Tom Billings