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Historic Gardens 2010
BCD Special Report
A Taste for the Exotic
Pineapple cultivation in Britain
Johanna Lausen-Higgins
C
hristopher Columbus first
encountered the pineapple in 1493,
unleashing a flurry of attempts to
convey its exotic flavour to uninitiated
Europeans. The superlatives and majestic
comparisons continued long after. In a work
of 1640, John Parkinson, Royal Botanist to
Charles I, described the pineapple as:
Scaly like an Artichoke at the first view,
but more like to a cone of the Pine tree,
which we call a pineapple for the forme...
being so sweete in smell... tasting... as if
Wine, Rosewater and Sugar were mixed
together.
(
Theatrum Botanicum
)
Parkinson wrote those words before the
pineapple had even reached the shores of
Britain. Its introduction to Europe resulted
in a veritable mania for growing pineapples
and parading them at the dinner table became
a fashion requisite of 18th century nobility.
In Britain and the Netherlands the practice
was not the preserve of the aristocracy but
also extended to the gentry. The pineapple
was a representation of owners’ wealth but
also a testimony to their gardeners’ skill and
experience. Producing a crop of tropical fruit
in the colder climes of Europe before the
advent of the hot water heating system in
1816 was a remarkable achievement and was,
perhaps not unjustly, described as ‘artistry’.
The founding of horticultural societies
during the Victorian period brought new
opportunities for the display of pineapples
at horticultural shows, a tradition that lasted
until the beginning of the 20th century.
However, the inevitable demise of the
pineapple as horticultural status symbol
began with the arrival of imported fruit from
the Azores at the end of the 19th century.
Origin
Pineapples originate from the Orinoco
basin in South America, but before their
introduction to Europe, the date of which is
uncertain, they were distributed throughout
the tropics. Later, this led to some confusion
about their origin.
The Gardener’s Dictionary
of 1759 by Philip Miller, for example, gives
the origin of the pineapple as Africa. The
pineapple is a terrestrial, tropical plant but is
remarkably desiccation-tolerant as it possesses
a range of leaf adaptations that help it to
cope with drought. This must explain why
the plant’s distribution was so successful long
before the invention of the Wardian case (the
19th century forerunner of the terrarium).
Early history
European pineapple cultivation was
pioneered in the Netherlands. The early
success of Dutch growers was a reflection
of the trade monopoly the Netherlands
enjoyed in the Caribbean in the form of the
Dutch West India Company, established
in 1621. As a result, plant stock could be
imported directly from the West Indies in
the form of seeds, suckers and crowns, from
which the first plants were propagated.
Agnes Block is believed to be the first
person to fruit a pineapple in Europe, on
her estate at Vijerhof near Leiden. Many
eminent Dutch growers joined the challenge,
including Jan Commelin, at the Amsterdam
Hortus botanical garden between 1688
and 1689, and Caspar Fagel at his seat
Flowering ‘Jamaica Queen’