Monday, June 9, 2014

Random plant event: Ananas 'Mongo'

I'm still trying to catch up with everything that's happened in the last few weeks. This is one of those things.


It's not visually very interesting, I suppose. I mean, you've probably seen a pineapple before. The main points of interest here are:

1) It just kind of came off spontaneously when I tried to adjust the stalk. (The stalk didn't actually fit into the shelf that the plant's been on since it came inside last fall, so from time to time I have to try to squeeze it back in there without breaking anything important.) It makes total sense that a pineapple's fruit would detach on its own, but for some reason this idea had never occurred to me before.

2) It smells so good. It's probably technically edible, but it's also very tiny, and not bred for taste ('Mongo' is an ornamental variety.), so I'm probably getting more from smelling it occasionally than I would from eating it once.

3) It's tiny, for a pineapple. The actual fruit, excluding the leaves, is only 2 1/2 inches (6.4 cm) long.

When I got 'Mongo,' I was under the impression that it was a cultivar of A. comosus, but at some point along the way I began to doubt this for some reason I don't remember, and started calling it just A. 'Mongo.' After smelling the fruit, I'm now thinking that no, it probably really is a variety of A. comosus after all. (So why not acknowledge that in the post title? I don't know.)

The plant is probably not going to go outside this summer, because I remember how exhausting and unrewarding it was to be moving plants in and out all the time last year. Not that it was going to produce fruit again right away anyway, but that's probably going to slow down the development of offsets.


1 comment:

Paul said...

I'd still have to taste the fruit at least this first time. Inquiring minds and all that.

On an unrelated note, came across a youtube video I thought you might enjoy. It's about taxonomists. heh Feel free to use it in a blog should the spirit move ye. URL present below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPqJkG2XhQ8