On this Wikipedia the language links are at the pineapple upside down cake of the page across from the article title. The pineapple is a herbaceous perennial, which grows to 1. 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. In the first year of growth, the axis lengthens and thickens, bearing numerous leaves in close spirals. 100 spirally arranged, trimerous flowers, each subtended by a bract. 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. The pineapple carries out CAM photosynthesis, fixing carbon dioxide at night and storing it as the acid malate, then releasing it during the day aiding photosynthesis. Ananas bracteatus, Dole Pineapple Plantation, Oahu, Hawaii, USA2. In the wild, pineapples are pollinated primarily by hummingbirds.

Certain wild pineapples are foraged and pollinated at night by bats. Tupinambá people, living near modern Rio de Janeiro, and now believed to be a pineapple. Purchas, writing in English in 1613, referred to the fruit as Ananas, but the Oxford English Dictionary’s first record of the word pineapple itself by an English writer by Mandeville in 1714. Paraguay River drainages between southern Brazil and Paraguay. Spanish from Latin America to the Philippines, and it was grown for textile use from at least the 17th century.

Columbus brought the plant back to Spain and called it piña de Indes, meaning “pine of the Indians”. The pineapple fascinated Europeans as a fruit of colonialism. But it was not successfully cultivated in Europe until Pieter de la Court developed greenhouse horticulture near Leiden from about 1658. 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. Many different varieties, mostly from the Antilles, were tried for European glasshouse cultivation. The most significant was “Smooth Cayenne”, imported to France in 1820, subsequently re-exported to the UK in 1835, and then from the UK via Hawaii to Australia and Africa. Smooth Cayenne” is now the dominant cultivar in world production. He founded the company now known as the Dole Food Company. Hawaiian production started to decline from the 1970s because of competition and the shift to refrigerated sea transport. Dole ceased its cannery operations in Honolulu in 1991, and in 2008, Del Monte terminated its pineapple-growing operations in Hawaii.

In the Philippines, “Smooth Cayenne” was introduced in the early 1900s by the US Bureau of Agriculture during the American colonial period. The Philippines remain one of the top exporters of pineapples in the world. The Del Monte plantations are now locally managed, after Del Monte Pacific Ltd. Filipino company, completed the purchase of Del Monte Foods in 2014. Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults.