Hein? Un Ananas?

Hein?  Un ananas?  means Huh? A pineapple? in French.  You probably don’t find that very funny.  But if you were in my senior year French AP class you would find it hilarious.  We even made t-shirts (puff paint!) with pineapples on them and that phrase.  It’s funny because when you say it in French it just rolls off your tongue like hien-un-an-an-as.  We used to go around saying it and cracking up.  Okay you probably still don’t think it’s funny.  But I’m laughing! 😀

So today it’s time for more pictures from Hawaii!  At this rate I’ll still be posting pictures in December.  Anywho the subject of the post is obviously pineapples because while I was on Oahu I visited the Dole Plantation.  Behold the lovely pineapple:

This is a pineapple actually growing on a plant.  I don’t see too many of these in Kansas so I was pretty excited to see pineapples in their natural state.

Did you know that it takes 18 months to grow one pineapple?  Here is the pineapple life cycle:

The top row shows the pineapple life cycle for the first 18 months, during the first fruit bearing.  The pineapple grows from the center of the plant.  Then the process is repeated but the plant grows a ratoon, which produces the second fruit.  Then that process is repeated with a second ratoon and a final third fruit.  Each plant produces 3 pineapples during its life.  You can click on the picture above to see it larger if you want.

Here is a baby pineapple!  Hopefully you can tell how small it is:

Can you imagine having that grow in your kitchen garden?  When I went to the farmer’s market on Kauai the farmers had pineapples they had grown themselves!

Here is an interesting red pineapple.  There are a lot of varieties of pineapple, but only one kind is grown for the U.S.  It’s not this one.

If I remember correctly, this red one might be popular in the Phillipines.

Here are some other pineapples growing on their ratoons:

I really enjoyed visiting the Dole Plantation.  If you are interested in plants or pineapples I highly recommend it.  Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to spend there since we spent most of the day at Pearl Harbor.  We only had time to walk around the gardens (which is free) and walk around the gift shop.

But there are several other things to do if you have more time.  There is a train ride, a garden tour, and the world’s largest maze.  There is also a substantial cafe where you can eat lunch and try lots of pineapple-inspired dishes.  The gift shop is really big too, but make sure you look at the “made in…” label.  I found several things that were not made in Hawaii! 

So do you like pineapple?  If you could grow a pineapple in your backyard, would you?