An apricot is a fruit or a tree that bears the fruit of several species in the genus Prunus (stone fruits). Usually, an apricot is from the species P. armeniaca, but the fruits of the other species in Prunus sect. Armeniaca are also called apricots. The fruit is a drupe similar to a small peach, 1.5–2.5 cm (0.6–1.0 in) diameter (larger in some modern cultivars), from yellow to orange, often tinged red on the side most exposed to the sun; its surface can be smooth or velvety with very short hairs.
In botany, a fruit is a seed-bearing structure in flowering plants formed from the ovary after flowering.
Fruits are how flowering plants disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits, in particular, have long propagated using the movements of humans and animals in a symbiotic relationship that is the means for seed dispersal for the one group and nutrition for the other; in fact, humans and many animals have become dependent on fruits as a source of food.