Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is the common name for an edible tropical plant and also its fruit It is native to the southern part of Brazil, and Paraguay. This herbaceous perennial plant plant grows to (1–1.5 m) tall with 30 or more trough-shaped and pointed leaves 30–100 cm long, surrounding a thick stem. The pineapple is an example of a multiple fruit: multiple, spirally-arranged flowers along the axis each produce a fleshy fruit that becomes pressed against the fruits of adjacent flowers, forming what appears to be a single fleshy fruit. Pineapple is commonly used in desserts and other types of fruit dishes, or on its own. Pineapples are the only bromeliad fruit in widespread cultivation. It is one of the most commercially important plants which carry out CAM photosynthesis.

Etymology

The name pineapple in English comes from the similarity of the fruit to a pine cone. The word was first recorded in 1398, where originally used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed pine cones). When European explorers discovered this tropical fruit that grows on trees, they called them "pineapples" (term first recorded in that sense in 1664) because they resembled what are now known as pine cones. The term "pine cone" was first recorded in 1694 to replace the original meaning of "pineapple".

In the scientific binomial Ananas comosus, ananas, the original name of the fruit, comes from the Tupi (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) word for pine nanas, as recorded by André Thevenet in 1555 and comosus means "tufted" and refers to the stem of the fruit.Fact: date=October 2007 Other members of the Ananas genus are often called pine as well by laymen.

In Spanish pineapples are called ananá ("ananás", in Spain) or piña, principally in Hispanic American countries. (see the piña colada drink). Many European languages, including Finnish, Polish, German, French, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Norwegian, Catalan, Lithuanian, Russian, Danish and Swedish use the native term ananas. A large, sweet pineapple grown especially in Brazil is called abacaxi (/abaka'ʃiː/).Fact: date=October 2007 In Tamil (Indian Ancient Language) is called "Annachi Pazham". In Bengali, pineapples are called "anarosh" and in Malayalam is it known "Kaitha Chakka". In Malay, pineapple is known as "nanas" or "nenas".

Botany

The leaves of the cultivar 'Smooth Cayenne' mostly lack spines except at the leaf tip, but the cultivars 'Spanish' and 'Queen' have large spines along the leaf margins.