ANANASSA, a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Bromeliacea', found wild in the woods of South America, and now commonly cultivated in the gardens of rich Europeans. It is distinguished from the Bromdia, to which it was once referred, by its succulent fruit collected in a compact head.
Of Ananansa saliva, the Common Pine-Apple, a great number of varieties are known, of which the Moscow and Common Queen, the Black Jamaica, and the Antigua Queen are the best for summer use, the Enville and the Trinidad the largest, the Black Jamaica the best for winter use, and the Blood-Red the worst for any purpose or season.
The fruit is a mass of flowers, the calyxes and bracts of which are fleshy and grow firmly together into a single head ; it is the points of these parts that together form what gardeners call the pips, that is to say, the rhomboidal spaces into which the surface is divided. When wild, Pine-Apples bear seeds like other plants; but in a state of cultivation, generally owing to the succulence of all tho parts, no seeds aro produced, and consequently the plants can only be multiplied by suckers, or by their branches, which gardeners call the gills and crown. The latter, which surmounts the fruit, is in reality the end of the branch round which the flowers are arranged, and if it has any tendency to ramification, as sometimes happens, it becomes what is called double.
The Pine-Apple was undoubtedly unknown before the discovery of America ; its incomparable flavour soon however caused it to bo introduced into Africa and Asia, where, in a suitable climate, it multiplied so rapidly as to acquire as firm a footing in those countries as their aboriginal plants. In Asia it has even improved so much in quality, that the Birmese Pines, which have never yet reached England, are said to be the finest in the world. With this exception it is believed that we already possess the best varieties that exist ; and it is undoubted that, except in the kingdom of Birma, the most delicious specimens of the fruit are produced in England. Within a recent period Pine-Apples have been imported largely into England from the West India Islands, where the cultivation has in consequence been more carefully attended to, the qualitygreatly improved, and this branch of commerce largely extended. [Pirtx-Arrr.r., in Arms