ANANASSA SATIYA. COMMON PINE-APPLE. 
Class VI. HEXANDRIA. — Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, BROMELIACEJL — THE PINE-APPLE TRIBE. 
A trifid superior calyx, a corolla of three petals, with a scale at the base of each petal, flowers growing in a 
close spike on a scape, which is leafy at the top ; as the spike of flowers ripens it becomes a fleshy, scaly 
strobile, like the cane of some species of pine tree, crowned at top by the bush of leaves. 
The Pine Apple is the Bromelia Ananas of Linneus. The Generic name was originally Ananas, from 
Nana, its common name in the Brazils ; and the Gueen Pine is named the Ananas Ovata, in the earlier 
editions of Miller’s Dictionary ; but Linneus changed it to Bromelia, in memory of Olaus Bromel, Swedish 
Naturalist, and included under it the Karatas, or Wild Pine, till then considered a distinct genus. 
The genus Bromelia has lost much of its interest and importance since the pine-apple has resumed its 
original Peruvian name, Nanas, now latinized Ananassa. The various species are remarkable for their power 
of subsisting for a long period on the fluids they contain, or on what they can absorb from the atmosphere, 
without any communication with the earth. Plence they are favourites with those who patronize hanging 
gardens, and in Mexico are commonly suspended to the balconies, for the sake of filling the houses with 
their delightful fragrance. Some of the Bromeliee are planted as hedges, and the leaves of others as the 
Grewatha, are made into ropes. 
( The different modes of cultivating the Pine-apple . — London, 1822.) 
The fruit of the Ananassa sativa, Lindl., says a writer in the Penny Cyclopaedia, is a tropical plant, 
indigenous to South America and some of the West India Islands. It has become so perfectly naturalized 
in many parts of the hot regions of Asia and Africa, that it has been thought to be likewise a native 
of those countries. When the British troops invaded Burma, they found the woods around Rangoon 
abounding in wild pine-apples, and a variety from the back of the Black Pagoda was in great request for its 
excellence : in the Malay Archipelago it acquires an enormous size, and sports into a variety called the double 
pine apple, each pip of its fruit growing into a branch bearing a new pine-apple. It was, however, first in- 
troduced into Europe from South America, and, as it is recorded by M. Le Cour of Leydon, about the 
middle of the seventeenth century: from Holland it was brought to this country in 1690, by the Earl of 
Portland, according to the Sloanean MSS. in the British Museum. There is a painting, formerly in the 
collection of Horace Walpole, in which Charles II. is represented as being presented with the first pine-apple 
by Rose his gardener ; but there are some doubts whether that fruit was grown in England or obtained from 
Holland. It may, however, be fairly concluded that pine-apples were exceedingly rare in this country, even 
at the tables of the nobility, in the beginning of the last century ; for in 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu remarks that pine-apples were on the electorial table at Hanover when she was there that year, on her 
journey to Constantinople ; and she states that she had never previously seen that species of fruit. {Letters 
of Lady M. TV. Montagu .) Since that period the cultivation of the pine-apple has been prosecuted with 
perseverance in Britain, but frequently the results have been very disproportionate to the expense incurred. 
Within the last twenty years, however, success has been more general ; and in many instances a surprising- 
degree of perfection has been attained, much greater indeed in England, than in any other country having 
to contend with an extra-tropical climate, for instances are on record of pine-apples weighing 13lbs. and 
14lbs. avoirdupois, and from 71bs. to 8lbs. is by no means an uncommon weight for a single fruit. At the 
present day the pine-apple in England is so abundantly produced, that although expensive, it is very com- 
mon. Its delicious flavour, and the noble appearance which a well-grown fruit exhibits, render the cultiva- 
tion of it a special object of horticultural enterprise and skill. 
