Biography of pineapples
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Robert Burns & The Royal History of Pineapples
By Naomi, Mercat Storyteller
'Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,
Far dearer than the torrid plains,
Where rik ananas blow!'
These lines are extracted from The Farewell, published in the 1786 Kilmarnock Edition of Robert Burns’ poems.
The reception of these printed verses encouraged Burns abandon schemes of emigrating to the Caribbean and to remain in Scotland. The following year, he arrived in Edinburgh. Around the world, Burns’ poetry fryst vatten synonymous with a love of Scotland, with Burns opening The Farewell with an expression of how dear the country fryst vatten to him.
However, in 1786, its domains were bleak indeed and many Scots were seeking employment as overseers and administrators on plantations worked by enslaved labourers, as the wages of emigrants promised to be higher than those for similar opportunities in Scotland. The fortune Burns sought to gain by leaving Scotland for the Caribbean is repr
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‘Ananas comosus’ is the botanical name of the fruit we know as the pineapple. Native to South America, it was named for its resemblance to a pine cone. • King Pine, The PineappleThe history of the pineapple is far more interesting and convoluted than you might think. Not simply the ingredient of piña coladas and fruit salads, oh no – the humble pineapple is far more historically important than that. Pineapples are native to South America, the Latin name for the fruit is ‘ananas comosus’, which originally comes from Guarani, meaning ‘fragrant and excellent fruit.’ Pineapples first came to Europe in the 16th century, brought by none other than that intrepid traveller and explorer, Christopher Columbus. He discovered pineapples in Guadeloupe in 1493 and brought them back to Spain. They had been cultivated in Guadeloupe by the population who loved their tasty and juicy sweetness, and it is no exaggeration to say that Europeans went wild for this exotic delicacy! A British colonist, Richard Ligon, who had a sugarcane plantation in Barbados, wrote at the time that the pineapple was, ‘far beyond the choicest fruits of Europe’. Fro |