The piña of the Indies: the first European descriptions of the pineapple, and the crown that carried it

Oviedo devoted a chapter of 1535 to the fruit the Christians called piña, and it contains the agronomy that made the plant portable: one fruit per plant, ten months to ripen, and the crown on top as the planting material. Acosta, fifty-five years later, adds what the transfer could not do — an emperor was handed a pineapple still on its plant and praised the smell without tasting it. Genomics explains why the crown mattered: the plant is self-incompatible and travels as a clone.