Pineapple

The Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a tropical plant and its fruit, native to Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. The plant is a bromeliad (Bromeliaceae), short, herbaceous perennial with thirty or more long, spined and pointed leaves surrounding a thick stem. Hummingbirds are the natural pollinators. The single fruit develops from many smaller berries fusing together. It is large and ovoid with a tough, spikey, waxy shell of many hexagonal sections, containing large amounts of white or yellow flesh with a tough, fibrous core. Depending on variety the fruit can be up to 30 cm long and weigh more than 4 kg.

It was spread from its original area by natives and by the time of Christopher Columbus it was found throughout South and Central America and the West Indies. Columbus may have taken a sample back to Europe. The Spanish introduced it in the Philippines, Hawaii (introduced in the early 19th centruy, first commercial plantation 1886) and Guam. The fruit was successfully cultivated in European hothouses from 1720.

Common cultivated varieties include Red Spanish, Hilo, Smooth Cayenne, St. Michael, Kona Sugarloaf, Natal Queen, and Pernambuco.

Southeast Asia dominates world production (Thailand (2.331 m tonnes (1999)) and the Philippines (1.495 m tonnes (1999))). Total world production in 1999 was 13.147 million tonnes.

In commercial farming flowering can be artificially induced and the early harvesting of the main fruit can encourage the development of a second crop of smaller fruits.

The fruit was name pineapple because of its resemblence to a pine cone.