Pineapple
Family Bromeliaceae
Ananas comosus (= Ananas sativus, = Bromelia comosus), the pineapple (A. comosus 1), is a perennial herb, up to 1 m in height, with 70-80 leaves arranged in a bushy rosette (A. comosus 2). Leaves long and narrow, up to 1 m long, with marginal spines. The compact inflorescence of 100-200 flowers, which develop into an equal number of fused berrylike fruitlets (A. comosus 3). The flowers are bisexual, with 3 sepals and 6 petals, 6 stamens and an inferior ovary. The fruit is a syncarp, about 20 cm long (A. comosus 4), (A. comosus 5). The fruit is rich in vitamins A, B1 and C. Cultivated pineapples are seedless and propagation is always vegetatively, usually by shoots arising in the leaf axils and crowns from the top of the fruit.
Distribution
The centre of origin is South America. The first record of pineapples by Europeans was on the island of Guadeloupe, where Columbus landed in 1493. The Spanish sailors called the fruit ‘pina’ , because of the resemblance with the cone of a pine tree. Pineapples soon spread rapidly throughout the tropics: St. Helena, 1505; Madagascar, 1548; South India, 1550; Philippines, 1558; Java, 1560; West Africa, 1602 (A. comosus 6); Formosa, 1650; South Africa, 1660; Mauritius, 1661;and finally Australia, 1839. Captain Cook did not report pineapples in the Pacific islands in 1778.
Use
Pineapples are eaten as dessert fruits in the tropics and subtropics. Most of the commercial crop is canned or made into juice and jam. In the Philippines and Taiwan the white silky fibres from the leaves are used for making a fine fabric, known as ‘pina cloth’ .
Biggest producers of pineapples are Thailand, China, Hawaii, Brazil, Philippines, Mexico, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, South Africa and Zaire. Most of the canned products are exported to Europe and the US; fresh pineapples are exported to Europe from South and East Africa, the West Indies and the Azores.