Ananas vs. Pineapple

Main Difference

The main difference between Ananas and Pineapple is that the Ananas is a genus of plants and Pineapple is a species of plant.

• Ananas

  Ananas is a plant genus of the bromeliad family (Bromeliaceae), native to South America and Central America, which includes the species Ananas comosus, the pineapple.This genus originated in Mesoamerica and was brought to the Caribbean Islands by the Carib natives. The oldest register with the representation of the fruit seems to be included in the Cascajal Block, attributed to the Olmec civilization.In 1493, Christopher Columbus first saw plants of this genus in Guadeloupe. It was brought from Brazil to Europe by the Portuguese, and from there was distributed to the Pacific Islands by the Spanish and the English. Commercial pineapple plantations were established in Hawaii, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, Florida, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The pineapple has become one of the world’s most popular fruits.The tough leaves grow in large rosettes, arising basally from a crown. These leaves are long and lanceolate with a serrated or thorny margin. The flowers, arising from the heart of the rosette, each have their own sepals. They grow into a compact head on a short, robust stalk. The sepals become fleshy and juicy and develop into the well-known complex form of the pseudocarp fruit, crowned by a rosette of leaves.Ananas species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Batrachedra comosae, which feeds exclusively on A. comosus.

• Pineapple

  The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a tropical plant with an edible fruit, also called pineapples, and the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae.Pineapples may be cultivated from the offset produced at the top of the fruit, possibly flowering in five to ten months and fruiting in the following six months. Pineapples do not ripen significantly after harvest. In 2016, Costa Rica, Brazil, and the Philippines accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s production of pineapples.

• Pineapple (noun)

  a large juicy tropical fruit consisting of aromatic edible yellow flesh surrounded by a tough segmented skin and topped with a tuft of stiff leaves

  “slices of pineapple”

  “roughly chop the pineapples and apricots”

• Pineapple (noun)

  the widely cultivated tropical American plant that bears the pineapple. It is low-growing, with a spiral of spiny sword-shaped leaves on a thick stem.

• Pineapple (noun)

  a hand grenade.