Pineapple Facts
The Dole Plantation is a gaping maw of tourist kitsch, a commercial blackhole designed to suck tour buses in and draw from them every last cent. But the Pineapple Demonstration Garden portion of the plantation, though small, is worth a look. Heading north from Honolulu to the North Shore through central Oahu, you'll drive right by the plantation. It's worth a fifteen minute stop to check out the demo garden.
Smooth Cayenne pineapple
Criolis pineapple
Pho Lang Tuang pineapple
Saigon Red pineapple
Pho Lang Tuang Pineapples
A star
unknown variety
Pineapple bloom
They're beautiful, aren't they? Here are a few fun pineapple facts:
- There were 31,000 acres of pineapples grown in Hawaii in 2004.
- One third of the world's pineapple comes from Hawaii.
- You can grow your own pineapple plant by twisting the crown off a store bought pineapple, letting it dry for 2-3 days, then planting it.
- The pineapple is not a single fruit as generally assumed, but a cluster of 100-200 tiny fruitlets.
- It takes two years for a pineapple plant to produce, and each plant typically produces at most two pineapples in its life.
- The pineapple is originally native to Brazil and Paraguay. Sailors brought them to the West Indies long before the arrival of Europeans, although it was White merchants who first introduced it to Hawaii.
- Pineapples are the only edible members of the bromeliad family of plants.
- Of the hundreds of varieties of pineapples, Smooth Cayenne is by far the most prevalent. Three other varieties are gaining in popularity: Red Spanish pineapples have a tougher skin that make shipping easier; Sugar Loaf pineapples are very large and heavy; Golden Supreme pineapples have lower acid and more sweetness.
I've also written in the past about how to pick and cut a pineapple.
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They're beautiful! I never knew they had flowers like that. And thanks for the tips on how to cut a pinapple.
Can pineapples be grown inside, say in MI, and how big is a pineapple plant?
Biscuit Girl - It is really amazing to see a whole plot of these speciality pineapples, each colorful football in a nest of prickly leaves.
Cate, yes you can grow pineapple plants indoors, although you'll do even better if you pull them outside during the summer months. Give them a little 16-16-16 fertilizer every few weeks (or some other balanced nutrition) and not too much water. I've got two started right now, and a very helpful retiree neighbor with several bearing fruit.
These are really beautiful. Thanks for sharing. And there is nothing quite as ono as pineapple in Hawaii!!
Hey, did you get a chance to do the big pineapple maze on the plantation? It's the largest permanent landscape maze in the world, beating out long-reigning champion Longleat in England by a hefty amount, if memory serves. The cornfield mazes that Adrian Fisher does every year are typically larger, but they come down at the end of the season.
I don't know how hard or easy it is as a maze; I don't remember who designed it.
(I also have an obsession with puzzles :) )
Oh, and the pineapples sound interesting, too :)
Suebob- you are so right. They harvest exported pineapples earlier so that they ship well, and as a result they never had a chance to develop their sugars. They taste woody in comparison.
Derrick- I saw the maze, but didn't pay the admission to go through. In hindsight, I should have given it a fair shake. The thing is huge.
only two pineapples per life span? for some reason that makes me sad. and not just because i love pineapple, which i do. i can't believe you had the chance to go through a maze and didn't. i've wanted to since i was little. lemme know if you and junko venture back and check it out. that would be SO FUN.
thank you so much my daughter found information she needed for a report
britney- i'm glad she found this helpful!
I remember when that tourist trap was just a dusty place on Kam on the way to Haleiwa--more a place to stop and add water to the radiator after a day of surfing! hehe.... now is this huge tourist mecca just past Whitmore.
Gotta wonder when the overgrown fields will be replaced with more tourist traps and houses. *sigh*
Less, it might be only a matter of time. Southeast Asia has rocketed past Hawaii in pineapple production, in large part because real estate is too expensive here. Land owners look at the profits from pineapple fields, and the profits from condos... we can guess which has a higher return.
Thank you so much, I have to do a report on a fruit and I chose pineapple and this site was very helpful! :)
Kylie, glad I could be of help. Good luck with the report.