The pineapple[2] (Ananas comosus) is a tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae.[3]
The pineapple is native to South America, where it has been cultivated for many centuries.[4] The introduction of the pineapple plant to Europe in the 17th century made it a significant cultural icon of luxury.[5] Since the 1820s, pineapple has been commercially grown in greenhouses and many tropical plantations. The fruit, particularly its juice, has diverse uses in cuisines and desserts.
Pineapples grow as a small shrub; the individual flowers of the unpollinated plant fuse to form a multiple fruit. The plant normally propagates from the offset produced at the top of the fruit[2] or from a side shoot, and typically matures within a year.[6]
Etymology
A pine cone, which was called a pineapple at least two centuries before use of the name for the tropical fruit
Pineapple fruit, whole and in cross sectionThe word pine apple was used by English explorer John Smith referring to the tropical fruit in 1624. The word apple was given during his time for any unfamiliar tree fruit that had a firm, round shape; a pine apple first referred to the cone (fruit) of the pine tree in the 14th century.[7] Gonzalo Hernández Oviedo described the piñas or pomme de pin (apple of pine) in Hispaniola around 1540.[4]
The first reference in English to the pineapple fruit was the 1568 translation from the French of André Thevet's The New Found World, or Antarctike where he refers to a Hoyriri, a fruit cultivated and eaten by the Tupinambá people, living near modern Rio de Janeiro, and now believed to be a pineapple.[4] Later in the same English translation, Thavet described the fruit as a Nana made in the manner of a Pine apple, where he used another Tupi word nanas.[8] When it was first discovered by explorers, the Tupi-Guarani and Carib people used it as a staple food with the name, nanas.[5] This usage was adopted in many European languages and led to the plant's scientific binomial Ananas comosus, where comosus ('tufted') refers to the stem of the plant.[4]
Description
Pineapple in the starting stage
Pineapple inflorescence
A young pineapple in flowerThe pineapple is a herbaceous perennial, which grows to 1 to 1.5 m (3+1⁄2 to 5 ft) tall on average, although sometimes it can be taller. The plant has a short, stocky stem with tough, waxy leaves. When creating its fruit, it usually produces up to 200 flowers, although some large-fruited cultivars can exceed this. Once it flowers, the individual fruits of the flowers join together to create a multiple fruit. After the first fruit is produced, side shoots (called 'suckers' by commercial growers) are produced in the leaf axils of the main stem. These suckers may be removed for propagation, or left to produce additional fruits on the original plant.[6] Commercially, suckers that appear around the base are cultivated. It has 30 or more narrow, fleshy, trough-shaped leaves that are 30 to 100 cm (1 to 3+1⁄2 ft) long, surrounding a thick stem; the leaves have sharp spines along the margins. In the first year of growth, the axis lengthens and thickens, bearing numerous leaves in close spirals. After 12 to 20 months, the stem grows into a spike-like inflorescence up to 15 cm (6 in) long with over 100 spirally arranged, trimerous flowers, each subtended by a bract.
In the wild, pineapples are pollinated primarily by hummingbirds.[2][9] Certain wild pineapples are foraged and pollinated at night by bats.[10] Under cultivation, because seed development diminishes fruit quality, pollination is performed by hand, and seeds are retained only for breeding.[2] In Hawaii, where pineapples were cultivated and canned industrially throughout the 20th century,[11] importation of hummingbirds was prohibited.[12]
The ovaries develop into berries, which coalesce into a large, compact, multiple fruit. The fruit of a pineapple is usually arranged in two interlocking helices, often with 8 in one direction and 13 in the other, each being a Fibonacci number.[13]
The pineapple carries out CAM photosynthesis,[14] fixing carbon dioxide at night and storing it as the acid malate, then releasing it during the day in order to reduce photorespiration.
TaxonomyThe pineapple comprises five botanical varieties, formerly regarded as separate species.[15] The genomes of three varieties, including the wild progenitor variety bracteatus, have been sequenced.[16]
Image Varieties Distribution Ananas comosus var. bracteatus (L.B.Sm.) Coppens & F.Leal Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador Ananas comosus var. comosus (Linnaeus) Merrill Brazil and Paraguay; naturalized in parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, northern South America, and various islands in the Pacific Ananas comosus var. erectifolius (L.B.Sm.) Coppens & F.Leal Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, northern Brazil, French Guiana Ananas comosus var. microstachys (Mez) L.B.Sm. from Costa Rica to ParaguayAnanas comosus var. parguazensis (Camargo & L.B.Sm.) Coppens & F.Leal Colombia, Venezuela, northern Brazil, Guyana, French GuianaHistoryPrecolonial cultivationThe wild plant originates from the Paraná–Paraguay River drainages between southern Brazil and Paraguay.[2][17][18][19] Little is known about its domestication, but it spread as a crop throughout South America. Archaeological evidence of use is found as far back as 1200–800 BC (3200–2800 BP) in Peru[20] and 200 BC – 700 AD (2200–1300 BP) in Mexico,[21] where it was cultivated by the Mayas and the Aztecs.[22] By the late 1400s, cropped pineapple was widely distributed and a staple food of Native Central and South Americans. The first European to encounter the pineapple was Christopher Columbus, in Guadeloupe on 4 November 1493.[5][23][24] The Portuguese took the fruit from Brazil and introduced it into India by 1550.[25] The 'Red Spanish [es]' cultivar was also introduced by the Spanish from Latin America to the Philippines, and it was grown to produce piña fibers that would then be used to produce textiles from at least the 17th century.[26]
Columbus brought the plant back to Spain and called it piña de Indes, meaning pine of the Indians. The pineapple was documented in Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World (1516) and Antonio Pigafetta's Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (1524–1525), and the first known illustration was in Oviedo's Historia General de Las Indias (1535).[27]
Old World introduction
Britannia presented with cornucopiae including pineapples by allegories of Nature, Industry, and Science, with an orangery in the background (frontispiece of The Gardeners Dictionary, 1764)While the pineapple fascinated Europeans as a fruit of colonialism,[28] it was not successfully cultivated in Europe until Pieter de la Court (1664–1739) developed greenhouse horticulture near Leiden.[29][24] Pineapple plants were distributed from the Netherlands to English gardeners in 1719 and French ones in 1730.[24] In England, the first pineapple was grown at Dorney Court, Dorney in Buckinghamshire, and a huge pineapple stove to heat the plants was built at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1723.[30][31] In France, King Louis XV was presented with a pineapple that had been grown at Versailles in 1733. In Russia, Peter the Great imported de la Court's method into St. Petersburg in the 1720s; in 1730, twenty pineapple saplings were transported from there to a greenhouse at Empress Anna's new Moscow palace.[32][33]
1772 illustration of an Ananas comosus pineapple which was given the early scientific name of Cardus brasilianus folius aloes by Banhius in 1623[34]Because of the expense of direct import and the enormous cost in equipment and labour required to grow them in a temperate climate, in greenhouses called pineries, pineapple became a symbol of wealth. They were initially used mainly for display at dinner parties, rather than being eaten, and were used again and again until they began to rot.[35] In the second half of the 18th century, the production of the fruit on British estates became the subject of great rivalry between wealthy aristocrats.[35] John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, built a hothouse on his estate surmounted by a huge stone cupola 14 metres tall in the shape of the fruit; it is known as the Dunmore Pineapple.[36] In architecture, pineapple figures became decorative elements symbolizing hospitality.[37][38][39]
Since the 19th century: mass commercializationMany different varieties, mostly from the Antilles, were tried for European glasshouse cultivation. The most significant cultivar was Smooth Cayenne, first imported to France in 1820, then subsequently re-exported to the United Kingdom in 1835, and then from UK, the cultivation spread via Hawaii to Australia and Africa. The Smooth Cayenne cultivar (and sub-selections or clones of the Smooth Cayenne) make up for the majority of world pineapple production today.[24] Jams and sweets based on pineapple were imported to Europe from the West Indies, Brazil, and Mexico from an early date. By the early 19th century, fresh pineapples were transported direct from the West Indies in large enough quantities to reduce European prices.[24] By the late 19th century, commercial pineapple production was specialized by region to optimize shipping times, with the Azores supplying European markets while Florida and the Caribbean dominated supply to North America.
