genus Ananas Mill.

Taxonomic Change:

• Designation of a new lectotype for the Genus: Acanthostachys ananassoides Baker (invalid.) —See Butcher & Gouda 2014a p. 16

Literature references:

Morren Icons: kew 9-288* Smith & Downs 1979: 2048*: 2050: 2050*

*move your mouse pointer over the page numbers to see comment

Comments:

• THE PINEAPPLE MEETS THE PRESS by Wyndham Hayward in Brom Soc. Bull. 6(3): 35-40. 1956
  There were no newspapers, no press services, no radio or cable to send home to Spain the marvels of the newly discovered Western World in the time of Columbus and his immediate successors. The news was told by means of letters and dispatches, most of the dispatches being merely long letters or narrative accounts of what the conquistadors did and found, relating the facts after the voyages of discovery.
  At first, the immediate matters of life and death in the New World were more important. There was little in the way of natural history or material about plants and animals in America. In fact, the Spanish rulers were reluctant to have any extensive data at all published about the New World for fear of inviting rivalry and competition from other European monarchs.
  One of the notable new fruits which the Spanish met early in the West Indies, at least on the second voyage of Columbus, in 1493, was the pineapple. There are four major sources of information about the pineapple in America of the Discovery Period, as follows:
  Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World (Alcala de Henares, 1516) which is believed to contain the first account of the pineapple in print.
  Antonio Pigafetta wrote about the pineapple as encountered on Magellan's voyage around the world in his chronicle of that voyage, Le Voyage et Navigacion .... published at Paris in 1526. Pigafetta was the young Knight of Rhodes who accompanied Magellan's voyage around the world and wrote the main, first hand account of the trip. His story tells of the expedition first finding the pineapple as a fruit among the natives of northwest Brazil in 1519. This is probably the second chronological mention of the pineapple in print.
  The third most important account of the pineapple, and the first known illustration in a printed book, appeared in Gonzalez Fernandez de Oviedo's Historia General de Las Indias, Seville, 1535. The illustration accompanying this article is from a copy of the 1535 edition of this work, kindly provided by the John Carter Brown Library at Providence, R. I. Incidentally, according to Dr. J. L. Collins, who has done extended research in the field, the original manuscript drawing of this woodcut survives and may be found on a page of the manuscript in the Huntington Library at San Marino, California.( J. L. Collins, "Antiquity of the Pineapple," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1951; Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 145-155.)
  Fourth, comes what may well be the most significant record of the pineapple as found in the early West Indies, although the account is not among the earliest printed sources chronologically. It is in Fernando Columbus' Historie del S.D. Fernando Colombo, Venice, 1571. This is an Italian translation by Alfonso Ulloa of Fernando's original Spanish text which remains to this day one of the most interesting and fascinating accounts of his father's life and the Discovery Period. (There is a modern Spanish translation of Fernando Columbus' Historia del Almirante Don Cristobal Colon, Madrid, 1932, 2 vol. Prof. Samuel EI'ot Morrison reports the latest available English translation is in Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages, Vol. XII, London, 1808. °Fernando Columbus' account of his father's encounter with the pineapple at Guadaloupe in 1493, when the Admiral touched at the then Cannibal island on the way to Espanola, follows, in translation from the Spanish edition of 1932. (Madrid, Coleccion de Libros Raros o Curiosos que Tratan de America. Vol. 1, Page 325): "They saw also squashes, and a certain fruit which resembled green pine cones (Pinus Pinea) like ours, although much larger, full of succulent pulp, like a melon, in odor and savor, but much smoother, which are borne on plants like lilies or aloes, and grow in the fields, although these are better which are cultivated, as is well known.") The original Spanish text is lost.
  In this rare volume Fernando Columbus reports that his father, Christopher Columbus, first saw pineapples on the then cannibal island of Guadaloupe in 1493 on his second voyage to the New World, and at Veragua (on the Central American mainland, now Panama,) on a subsequent voyage (The account of the pineapple on Guadaloupe is on page 325, Vol. 1, of the modern Spanish translation, Madrid, mentioned before ).
  
  Oviedo's description and picture of the pineapple appeared in print thirtyfive years earlier, but he makes no mention of pineapples on Guadaloupe. Oviedo was more of a naturalist and, therefore, more interested in the plants and animals of the New World than most of the Spanish 15th century authors. The writer regards Oviedo's illustration as a remarkable example of primitive, albeit impressionistic art, and realistic enough, as well, to leave no doubt as to what plant and fruit the artist was presenting.
  This fruit, the pineapple of today, is one of the most popular and important economic fruits of the world, and presumably, was unknown in the old world before the time of Columbus. ( Collins and E. D. Merrill, in The Botany of Cook's Voyages, 1954 (Chronica Botanica ), discuss the probability of the identification of certain ancient sculptured and painted fruits in Asia Minor and Pompeii as representing the true pineapples).
  The botanical name is Ananas comosus (Linn. Merrill), and while certain other species of Ananas, Bromelia and a few related genera of the Bromeliaceae bear edible fruits, there is no doubt from Oviedo's illustration that he was writing about our Ananas comosus.
  Other novelties of the plant world which the Spaniards met in the West Indies, certainly on the island of Hispaniola, where the first settlements were made, such as the sweet potato, the cassava and maize, were announced to the world by Peter Martyr prior to that of the pineapple in the Italian condensation of Martyr's First Decade. This appeared as the famous Libretto di tutta la Navigatione de Re de Spagne, Venice, 1504, and as the first appearance of Martyr's First Decade, Seville, 1511.
  However, it seems that the world of horticulture and natural history had to wait until Martyr's De Orbe Novo Decades at Aleala, 1516, for the first printed mention of this choice fruit. The original work, (1516) is a folio of 64 printed pages in roman letters, a very rare volume, which may be found described fully under No. 88 of Henry Harrisse's great Biblioteca Americana Vetustissima, New York, 1866 which remains today the standard bibliography of published works of the Discovery Period relating to America, (1492-1550). Harrisse's account is on pages 151-53.
  As the editio princeps of the pineapple in print, Martyr's reference in this 1516 volume is worthy of more extended study. So far as is known, neither the Latin text nor a competent recent translation has been published in America previously. The only English translation in America was published by F. A. MacNutt, New York, 1912, two volumes. Richard Eden made his well known translation of Martyr's first four Decades into his tough Tudor English in 1555 including the pineapple reference.( "The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India . . . Wrytten in the Latine tounge by Peter Martyr of Angleria and translated into Englisshe by Rycharde Eden," London, 1555). This text was reprinted by Edward Arber in England in 1885.
  Peter Martyr, or Pietro Martire d'Angleria (his Italian name) as he is sometime known, is regarded as the first historian of America. He was a remarkable figure of his time being an historian, educator, poet, cleric, soldier, and many other things. Because of the narrow field of early American history in which he mainly distinguished himself, he is little known today outside of the small circle of Discovery Period students and researchers. You will not find him in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and few studies have been devoted to him. His volume of intensely interesting Latin letters, 800 of them, lies still mainly untranslated
  after 426 years. There exists a copy in the John Carter Brown Library.
  Such historians as Samuel Eliot Morrison rate him among the four most dependable sources for the early history of the Columbus Period, and certainly not least among these. (Martyr, Oviedo, Las Casas and Fernando Columbus.)
  His mention of the pineapple comes in Book IX, Decade II, of his De Orbe Novo, (1516 ) . This edition contains the first three Decades. The 1511 edition contains only the first Decade.
  Book IX is entitled Crediti Continentis and discusses various natural history features of the newly discovered West Indies, among them various fruits and vegetables; from the John Carter Brown Library's 1516 edition we are pleased to reproduce the text of the pineapple item in Latin as follows: (For this and many other favors the writer wishes to express his appreciation to the John Carter Brown Library of Providence and to its distinguished Librarian, Dr. Lawrence C. Wroth, who first interested him in the old records of the Discovery Period at Brown University 30-odd years ago.
  
  "Alium fructum se invictissimus Rex Ferdinand comedisse fatetur ab iisdem te terris aduectu: squamosum: pinus nucamentum aspectu: forma calore aemulatur: sed mollicie par melope poni: sapore omnen superat mortensem fructum non enim arbor est sed herba carduo et similis aut acantho. Huic et Rex ipse palmam tribuit. Ex iis ego pomis minime comedi quia unum tantum e paucis allatis reperere incorruptum; exteris ex longa navigatione putrefactis. Qui in nativo solo recentia ederunt illorum cum admiratione suauitatem extollunt . . ."
  
  Dr. Harold Hume, of Gainesville, Florida's dean of horticulturists and garden writers, and authority on citrus, camellias, azaleas and hollies, has translated this paragraph for the writer, as follows:
  
  "Another fruit the most invincible King Ferdinand acknowledges that he has eaten when brought from these same lands: scaly: a pine cone in appearance: In form: in warmth it surpasses it: but in softness like a cucumber-melon: in flavor it surpasses every garden fruit for it is not a tree but an herb and like a thistle or Acanthus (or artichoke). To it also the King himself assigns the palm. Of these fruits I ate none at all: because only one of the few that were imported could be found that was not rotten ( ? ) : the rest (others) decayed by reason of the long voyage. Those who ate them fresh on their native soil extoll their sweetness with wonder."
  
  There is a touch of human interest here in the text where Martyr seems to report with some regret the fact that he had never tasted the new fruit, as King Ferdinand (the Ferdinand of "Ferdinand and Isabella," of course) ate the only one that survived the long sea voyage from the West Indies in good condition. It is interesting to note that the fabulous Ferdinand died in that same year of the publication of Martyr's Decades, 1516. The date of the shipment of pineapples is not given but might be any time prior, probably before 1500, it would seem.
  Martyr's second Decade is dedicated to Pope Leo X. His history or Decades was written in the form of news letters to various notables of the time and published years afterward. Martyr's dates are usually given as 1457-1526. He was born in Anghiera, near Milan; he went to Rome where he completed his education; he journeyed to Spain, as did a number of brilliant young scholars of the time, on the invitation of the Count of Tendilla, one of Spain's great grandees. His rise to fame was rapid, and he became tutor to the Royal Princes, chaplain to Queen Isabella, envoy to Egypt, member of the Council of the Indies and dean of the Cathedral of Grenada.
  Martyr was personally acquainted with the major figures of the Discovery Period and gathered his facts by letter and first hand interviews. He maintained a constant correspondence with the explorers and the learned men of Europe of his day.
• Local names: anani or nanai, ananas de ramosa (Brazil, Para), curibijul, maya pinon, pinuela, ananas do indio. —See Bartholomew et al. 2003
• Common names: curagua, curaua, curana, kulaiwat, pitte. —See Bartholomew et al. 2003
• Common names: pina montenera (Amazonas. Venezuela), ananai (Roraima, Brazil), kurupira-nana (Rio Negro, Brazil), gravata (Para, Brazil). —See Bartholomew et al. 2003
• Common names: ananas de cerca, ananas bravo, ananas do mato, karaguata-ruha (southern Brazil). —See Bartholomew et al. 2003