The Marco Island Historical Society had a public celebration for Pineapple Day at the Historical Museum last Saturday. If you were able to attend, you learned a lot about the history of pineapples on Marco Island. I thought I would send this information out to those of you who could not attend.
Although the climate of Florida is not perfectly suited to large scale commercial production of pineapple, there was at one time a large pineapple farm on Hoar’s Island, now known as Key Marco. This was in the days when the clam factory was also in operation. You can grow very sweet pineapples here and many people have a plant or two tucked into their garden.
The pineapple originated in Brazil and Paraguay but will grow in all the tropical and warm, subtropical areas of the world. The plant is a small, herbaceous perennial with long sword-like leaves which spiral around the short stem. The fruit develops from the end of the stem and consists of many small, seedless fruits fused together. Size can vary from one to 10 pounds or more. Pineapples are oval to cylindrical in shape and yellowish to orange in color when ripe. They can add an interesting year-round shape to a border garden or flower bed…