Let’s get one thing straight, people: The pineapple is not a toy. Just look at this description of the pineapple plant’s foliage:

“The long, pointed leaves are 20-72 in. in length, usually needle-tipped and generally bearing sharp, upcurved spines on the margins.”

That’s not a fruit, that’s a weapon! Yet look how blithely The Pineapple Girl holds her spiky namesake. Oblivious to the hazards, she beams at the camera, not realizing that one of those pointed, needle-tipped, sharp spines is about to puncture her cornea.

But that’s not all…

Toxicity

• Workers who cut up pineapples have their fingerprints almost completely obliterated by pressure and the keratolytic effect of bromelain (calcium oxalate crystals and citric acid were excluded as the cause).

• The recurved hooks on the left margins can painfully injure one.

• Mitchell and Rook (1979) also restated earlier work on “pineapple estate pyosis” occurring in workers who gather the fruits, probably an acarus infestation with secondary bacterial infection.

• Angular stomatitis can result from eating the fruit.

• Ethyl acrylate, found in the fruits, produced sensitisation in 10 of 24 subjects “by a maximisation test.” Ethyl acrylate is used in creams, detergents, food, lotions, perfumes, and soaps.

• In “therapeutic doses”, bromelain may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, skin rash, and menorrhagia. Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk (1969-1979) restate a report, unavailable to me, of unusual toxic symptoms following ingestion of the fruit, heart failure with cyanosis and ecchymoses, followed by collapse and coma and sometimes death (Duke, 1984b).

Purdue University
Center for New Crops & Plant Products

So, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake: “Topsy-Turvy Treat” or “Dessert of Death?”

After the pineapple slip has been planted through holes made in the mulch paper, it grows to maturity in about a year and a half. Then, it bears, at intervals of six months, a total of about a dozen pines, by which time its life cycle is finished.

It seems to me that the market for this sort of thing would be…not large. I just can’t imagine many Hawaiian vacationers calling to their spouse…

“Honey, the luau starts at 6 o’clock! Until then, I’m going to find a beach chair by the pool and read. If you’re going out, could you drop by the gift shop in the lobby and see if they have any souvenir postcards that feature agricultural workers’ butts?”

Plantation Paradise

“Where Pineapples Grow”

GIFT SHOP and FRUIT STAND
Our Specialties: Frosty Pineapple Juice Homemade Preserves and Candies

U.S. Hwy. 27, 4 miles South of Lake Placid, Florida

Open Daily 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Bring Your Camera and Stroll Through Our Tropical Garden

pine

verb [intrans.]

1. suffer a mental and physical decline, esp. because of a broken heart. She thinks I am pining away from love.
2. (pine for) miss and long for the return of. I was pining for my boyfriend.

Origin: Old English pinian [(cause to) suffer,] of Germanic origin; related to Dutch pijnen, German peinen ‘experience pain,’ also to obsolete pine [punishment]; ultimately based on Latin poena ‘punishment.’

Here are two examples of turn-of-the-century postcard humor. Both feature a gentleman pining for a loved one and in both cases he’s got a pineapple for a head. Get it? Pining? Pineapple? The wordplay is genius. Genius, I tell you. And what’s funnier than a guy with a pineapple for a head?

“I’m Crazy Pineapple-Head! And I want some candy! I don’t have a normal head, I got a pineapple growing out of it! Now, give me some crazy candy! Ow-ooo, this pineapple makes me crazy!”

But would someone…anyone…care to explain that second example to me? “I’m no Indian but I do pine for you?”

Sure, the pineapple originated in the New World, but by the turn of the century the pineapple was most often associated with the South Pacific and the Far East, so surely it can’t be referring to Native Americans. Yet the Republic of India has never been a major producer of pineapples, so what other explanation is there?

It makes about as much sense as…

I’m no Lithuanian but I’ve bean missing you.

…or…

I’m no British North Bornean but I’m plum out of patience with your absence.