Pineapple with multiple crowns

Spotted this multi-crowned pineapple while passing through a small pepper farm few weeks ago. It’s not the most striking or surprising multi-crowned specimen I’ve ever seen but I still thought it was worth a few clicks of the shutter. Hard to tell for sure without prying apart the leaves but there’s got to be at least 4 or 5 crowns in there.

The most striking specimen, I came across while visiting the road side native market at Kampung Duyoh (near Kampung Serikin weekend market). It had a fan crown, the upper part of the fruit was flattened out like a fan and there were many small mini crowns across the top of the “fan”. The unusual fruit attracted a lot of interest from passers-by, some of whom took photos with the fruit. The enterprising owner (one of the sellers in the market) charged RM1 for each photo taken with his prized fruit. :)

Pineapples are easy to cultivate if you have the right kind of soil, not too packed and not too wet. They do very well grown in peaty soil (tanah gambut) and are often grown in cleared and drained peat swamps. In Sarawak, pineapples are grown in Sebuyau, Simunjan, Samarahan, Sarikei and other districts with large peat soil areas.

Just cut off the crown and slot it into a shallow hole in the soil, that’s how we do it anyway. They can also be propagated from new vegetative growth emerging from the stalk just below the fruit (resembling miniature pineapples), shoots arising from the base of the plant or suckers popping out of the leaf axils.

Hmm, will this crown produce multiple plants when planted?

There are a few varieties for sale in the markets here, the three more common ones that I know of are nanas sawit, nanas paun and nanas madu. Of the three, nanas paun is the largest. Sarikei pineapples are also very popular and famous in Sarawak, they are small sized but are nice and sweet.

And what’s this? This here is a nanas madu which I pried open with my bare hands! LOL. I was traveling and had bought some pineapples to bring home. But as I was packing and getting ready to leave for the airport, my luggage felt a bit heavy, so I chose the ripest nanas, made like a hungry squirrel and chomped away (although squirrels don’t use their bare hands - paws? - to open fruits)! Of course, I could have asked for a small knife from house keeping but where’s the fun in that? :)

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