Historical Miscellany #33 – First description of a pineapple [1647]

Pineapple

I took a break from my weather books in the British Library on Wednesday and spent twenty minutes with Johnson’s The Gardiner’s Monthly from 1847 – a stern and scrupulous Victorian production.

It included this early (apparently the first recorded) description of a pineapple:

Annana pineas, the pinia, or pine thistle is a plant having leaves like the aizoon aquaticum or water sengreene. The meat of this fruit is sweet, and very pleasant of taste, yielding good nourishment. There are certain small fibres in the meat which, though they do not offend the mouth, yet hurt the gums of such as too frequently feed thereon.

Image credit: KelvinBeecroft

(More Historical Miscellany here)

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