Vegetables aren’t even a thing botanically, they’re basically “plant stuff that isn’t fruit”, except when it is.

Botanically speaking, vegetables can be roots (carrots, beets), stems (celery, asparagus), leaves (spinach, lettuce), flowers (broccoli, cauliflower) seeds (peas, beans), and of course fruits that we treat as savory (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants).

And then on the opposite side you have things we call fruits that botanically speaking aren’t. Rhubarb is a stem, strawberries are aggregate accessory fruits where the fleshy part we eat is actually swollen stem tissue, and those little “seeds” on the outside are the real fruits of the plant. Figs are not simple fruits, they’re inverted flower clusters where the “fruit” is actually a hollow stem containing many tiny real fruits inside.

Even apples and pears aren’t true fruits botanically, they’re accessory fruits where much of what we eat comes from the flower’s receptacle rather than just the ovary.

So yeah the botanical vs. culinary divide works both ways. Our everyday food categories are really more about taste, texture, and how we use foods rather than plant biology.