Hawaii barred imported hummingbirds to keep its pineapples free of seeds
Wild pineapples rely mostly on hummingbirds for pollination, but pollinated fruit develops seeds, and seeds spoil the eating quality. So in Hawaii, where pineapples were grown and canned on an industrial scale through the 20th century, bringing in hummingbirds was forbidden. Growers hand-pollinate only when they want seeds for breeding.
Left unpollinated, each plant still makes fruit. A spike of more than 100 small flowers forms after a year or more of growth, and the berries from these flowers fuse into one compact multiple fruit. Its surface spirals in two interlocking sets, often 8 one way and 13 the other, both Fibonacci numbers. The plant itself, Ananas comosus, is a bromeliad about a metre tall with a rosette of tough, spiny leaves. It saves water with CAM photosynthesis, taking in carbon dioxide at night and using it by day. New plants are grown from the leafy crown or from side shoots.
The wild ancestor comes from the Paraná and Paraguay river basins between southern Brazil and Paraguay. How it was domesticated is unclear, but archaeological traces reach back to 1200 to 800 BC in Peru, and the Maya and Aztecs grew it in Mexico. By the late 1400s it was a staple across Central and South America. Christopher Columbus became the first European to meet it, on Guadeloupe, on 4 November 1493. The Portuguese carried it to India by 1550, and in the Philippines a Spanish-introduced cultivar was used for piña fibre textiles from at least the 17th century.
The names are a tangle. The Tupi-Guarani and Carib called it nanas, which gave the scientific name Ananas and the word used in many European languages; comosus means tufted. English went its own way. Pine apple originally meant a pine cone, back in the 14th century, and apple was a catch-all for unfamiliar round, firm fruit, so John Smith applied the name to the tropical fruit in 1624.
Once it reached Europe in the 17th century, the pineapple became an emblem of luxury. From the 1820s it was grown commercially in greenhouses and on tropical plantations, and its juice now turns up in everything from savoury dishes to desserts.
Source: Pineapple
