10 Facts About Pineapples You Never Knew

Pineapple is an awesome and unique fruit. It’s delicious on its own, but we’ve come to love it on a pizza, in a fruit salad, as juice or garnish on a cocktail, and you know pineapple margaritas are the best. But how much do you know about pineapples? They’ve got quite a fascinating history and we bet you’ll be surprised by some of the facts about them.

Pineapple is native to South America and has been cultivated by the natives before the Europeans arrived and discovered this odd-looking but delicious fruit. Europeans attempted to grow it too but soon figured out that it needs a tropical climate, so they brought it over to their Asian and African colonies.

2. Speaking of cultivating pineapples, did you know that it takes almost 3 years to grow a pineapple fruit? It’s easy to grow the plant, you just need to plant a pineapple leaf to grow a whole plant. But the process of producing and ripening the fruit will take between 18 and 20 months. And one pineapple plant can only produce one pineapple fruit at a time. Think about that next time you complain about the prince of fresh pineapples.

3. The name “pineapple” dates back to the 1660s. The reason it’s called that is because the fruit resembles a pinecone on the outside. Pineapples are quite spiky and well protected on the outside, so we do wonder how people figured out it was edible and so tasty.

4. However, pineapples are only tasty when they’re ripe. When they’re unripe their juices are irritating and very unripe, small pineapples are actually toxic and poisonous. It’s unlikely that you’ll come across such unripe pineapples in the store, but still the riper the better and sweeter it will taste.