Location Taken: Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008
You know, pineapples just don’t quite look right when they’re on the plant. They, well, just seem attached the wrong way or something.
I mean, you look at a pineapple in the store. Leaves on top, hard spiky bit on bottom, tasty stuff in middle. Well, first off, “pine” and “apple” are both words related to trees, so for a long time I assumed that pineapples grew on trees. Not too unreasonable, I mean, most large fruits that grow on low-growing plants develop flat spots where it was laying on the ground. Just look at melons and squash some time, they’ve all got flatter spots.
There are some plants who have their fruits in the midrange that I see growing occasionally, like corn and peas, but those are all far lighter than a pineapple. Surely something that heavy would bend the stalk too much or something.
But no, it’s on top of its stalk. And even weirder, it grows right out of the top of the center stalk. I mean, most plants I’ve seen grow their fruit on smaller side stems and branches, because that way they can grow multiple fruits per plant, which when you think about it is an excellent idea. More fruits means more seeds means more baby plants. The pineapple, on the other hand, says “one fruit at a time is good enough for me!” At least putting it on the top of the center stalk does mean it can have that stalk be rigid enough to keep the fruit off the ground…
And then there’s the leafy bits! You see the pineapple on the store, and it’s not THAT dissimilar from an apple or a strawberry, with leafy bits on one end. Surely, just like the apple or strawberry, that means the leafy bits are attached to the base plant and are just more convenient (or pretty) to leave on than remove, right? Nope, the pineapple is contrary once again, and the leafy bits are the side that’s NOT attached to the mother plant. Instead, it just looks weird, like someone bought a pineapple from the store and ineptly glued it onto the top of a different plant that had similar leaves or something. But alas, that IS how the pineapple grows. Heck, the reason why it has that hard inedible core you have to remove is because that’s part of the center stalk going through the fruit up to the top leaves. So I guess in some ways the pineapple isn’t placed on top of the stalk, it IS the top of the stalk.
I was weirded out when I first saw a picture of a pineapple plant. Well, I suppose picture isn’t the right word. It was in a video game, I think The Sims 2 or 3 or something, one of those games where you can grow a virtual garden. (And no, despite my fondness for gardening games, I’ve never ever tried Farmville. Too social.) So I did a touch of research, and was still a bit weirded out. I mean, have you seen pictures of whole fields of pineapple? It looks so odd! I guess if you grew up with it, it’d look quite normal, but where I come from, plants just don’t grow that way. Even when I’ve seen a pineapple growing in real life, I’m still a little weirded out. Which is why I took a picture of it, of course.
