Pineapplepahy-nap-uhl] noun : the edible, juicy, collective fruit of a tropical, bromeliaceous plant,Ananas comosus, that develops from a spike or head of flowers and is surmounted by a crown of leaves.
Fruit is such an odd word if you really think about it. It describes a delicious treat, a juicy snack, or a topic of rigorous debate. Fruit can be all different colors of the rainbow, but so far the weirdest one ever encountered has to be the pineapple. It tastes like neither pine nor apple, therefore where did the name come from? It can’t simply be that someone was just walking around in Hawaii and stumbled upon a pine tree with fruit underneath of it and said “Oh, why…looks like a pinecone! But it’s fruit! I shall call it a pineapple!” The pine part is understandable because its outer peel looks pinecone-like. But why apple? It could be pine-orange, it could be pine-grapefruit, it could even be pine-kiwi! But no, it was called the pineapple. Let’s compare the general characteristics shall we?
Apples are red, and the inside of a pineapple is yellow. In all of my seventeen years on this earth, I have not seen the inside of a pineapple be red. Pineapples have a rough outer shell similar to a tortoise; apples have a smooth skin that is shiny and easily removed. Not even the flesh of the inside of a pineapple is smooth! It is stringy and acidic and it gets stuck in your teeth. Apples have seeds and pineapples do not. Apples are extremely time consuming and complicated to grow. All you have to do to grow a pineapple is plant the top of one in the dirt! However, both fruits have cores. Then again, the apples core contains the seeds, and the core of a pineapple is tough and waxy. Even the taste is extremely different. Apples are somewhat crunchy, juicy and basic. Pineapples are soft, stringy, and above all, acidic. It just doesn’t make any sense to have called the pineapple a pineapple.
Besides taste and appearance there are also scientific downfalls to this fruit being called a pineapple. What if a genealogist is working with fruits and accidentally creates a new hybrid between the real apple and pineapple? What is he going to call it? A pineappleapple? It’s ridiculous! But, I digress. I guess comparing apples to pineapples is like comparing apples and oranges, but that’s an argument for another day.
