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50 free Pineapple trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free pineapple trivia questions with answers. The pineapple has a stranger history than almost any fruit in the supermarket. It travelled from Brazil to Europe with Columbus, became so expensive that 18th-century hosts rented one for the dinner table, drove James Dole to buy an entire Hawaiian island, and ended up on pizza in Ontario. This quiz covers all of it in forty-eight questions. Easy questions ask what pineapples grow on, which cartoon sponge lives in one, and what a piña colada is made of. Harder ones get into botany (why it fixes carbon at night, why its eyes follow Fibonacci numbers), farming (the Smooth Cayenne and MD-2 cultivars, why hummingbirds are banned in Hawaii) and history (Louis XV, the Dunmore Pineapple, the Philippine piña cloth trade). Good for pub quizzes, classrooms and food nerds. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the pineapple, its growers, its dishes and its drinks, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01On which continent is the pineapple plant native?
South America
The pineapple is native to South America, specifically the Paraná–Paraguay river basins of southern Brazil and Paraguay, from where indigenous peoples spread it through the tropics.
Q 02What is the pineapple's scientific name?
Ananas comosus
Ananas comosus is the pineapple's binomial: 'Ananas' derives from an indigenous Brazilian word for the fruit, and comosus means 'tufted', for the leafy top.
Q 03Pineapples belong to which plant family?
Bromeliaceae
It is by far the most economically important bromeliad; most of its relatives are ornamental air plants.
Q 04Which explorer was the first European to encounter a pineapple, on Guadeloupe?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus's crew found pineapples on Guadeloupe in November 1493 during his second voyage; the fruit was named piña de Indias, 'pine of the Indies'.
Q 05Why did 17th-century English speakers apply 'pineapple', their word for a pine cone, to the fruit?
The fruit resembled a pine cone
The fruit resembled a pine cone, which English had called a 'pine apple' since the 1300s; Captain John Smith used the word for the tropical fruit in 1624.
Q 06Botanically, what is a pineapple?
A multiple fruit of fused flowers
A pineapple is a multiple fruit of fused flowers: each 'eye' on the skin was a separate flower whose berry merged with its neighbours around the central stalk.
Q 07Roughly how many flowers does a pineapple plant produce to make one fruit?
Up to 200
A pineapple inflorescence carries up to 200 flowers, typically 100 to 200, spiralling around the stalk; each sets one 'eye' of the finished fruit.
Q 08In the wild, pineapples are mainly pollinated by what?
Hummingbirds
Hawaii banned importing hummingbirds to keep commercial fruit seedless; some wild plants are pollinated by bats at night.
Q 09A pineapple's spiral 'eyes' run in helices of 8 and 13, numbers from which famous series?
The Fibonacci sequence
Sunflower seeds and pine cones show the same pattern.
Q 10Which unusual type of photosynthesis lets pineapples take in carbon dioxide at night?
CAM
CAM, crassulacean acid metabolism, lets pineapples open their stomata at night, storing carbon dioxide as malic acid and releasing it by day, a water-saving trick shared with cacti.
Q 11Which Dutch grower developed the hothouse method that let Europeans raise pineapples?
Pieter de la Court
Pieter de la Court van der Voort, a Leiden cloth merchant, perfected pineapple hothouses in the late 1600s; plants spread from Dutch gardens to English gardeners in 1719 and French ones in 1730.
Q 12Which French king was presented with a pineapple grown at Versailles in 1733?
Louis XV
Louis XV, who reigned from 1715 to 1774, was presented with a pineapple grown in the Versailles hothouses in 1733, three years after Dutch plants reached French gardeners.
Q 13Why did pineapples become a symbol of wealth in 18th-century Europe?
Q 21Which Caribbean nation's coat of arms shows five golden pineapples on a red cross?
Jamaica
Jamaica's coat of arms, granted in 1661, bears a red cross charged with five golden pineapples, flanked by two Taíno figures with a crocodile on the crest.
Q 22What is the name of the pineapple enzyme that tenderises meat and stops gelatin from setting?
Bromelain
Bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme concentrated in the stem and fruit, breaks down meat proteins and gelatin; it is also why fresh pineapple makes your mouth tingle.
Q 23Raw pineapple is a rich source of vitamin C and which mineral?
Manganese
A 100 g serving supplies about 40% of the daily value of manganese and 53% of vitamin C.
They cost a fortune to import or raise in heated pineries
Rich hosts often displayed a single pineapple at dinner after dinner until it rotted, without eating it.
Q 14In architecture, a carved pineapple traditionally symbolises what?
Hospitality
The pineapple became a symbol of hospitality because hosts who served the costly fruit honoured their guests; carved pineapples decorate gateposts, finials and door knockers as a legacy.
Q 15The Dunmore Pineapple, a hothouse topped by a 14-metre stone pineapple, is in which country?
Scotland
The Dunmore Pineapple stands at Dunmore Park near Airth in Scotland; built in 1761 as a summerhouse over a hothouse, it hides its chimneys inside stone Grecian urns.
Q 16Which cultivar dominated world pineapple production through most of the 20th century?
Smooth Cayenne
Smooth Cayenne, first imported to France in 1820, was the world's dominant canning and fresh-fruit cultivar for most of the 20th century; its clones spread via the Pacific to Australia and Africa.
Q 17Which 'Pineapple King' arrived in Honolulu in 1899 and founded his namesake pineapple company?
James Dole
James Dole, the 'Pineapple King', founded his pineapple company in 1901, two years after landing in Honolulu; he was a cousin of Sanford Dole, who had been president of the islands' republic.
Q 18Which entire Hawaiian island did the Pineapple King buy in 1922 to turn into a plantation?
Lanai
The Pineapple King bought the island of Lanai in 1922 for about $1.1 million and turned much of it into the world's largest pineapple plantation, earning it the nickname 'Pineapple Island'.
Q 19What did Dole engineer Henry Ginaca invent in 1911 that transformed the canning industry?
An automatic peeling and coring machine
James Dole had started commercial processing of the fruit; the Ginaca machine made canned rings possible at scale.
Q 20What is the rosette of stiff leaves on top of a pineapple called?
The crown
The crown is the rosette of stiff leaves topping the fruit; it grows from the apex of the flower spike after the flowers set and is trimmed off before canning.
Q 24Roughly what percentage of raw pineapple flesh is water?
86%
Raw pineapple flesh is about 86 percent water by weight; the rest is mostly carbohydrate, giving roughly 50 calories per 100 grams.
Q 25What happens to a pineapple's ripeness after it is picked?
It stops where it was at harvest
It is a non-climacteric fruit; growers spray ethephon a week before harvest to turn the skin golden.
Q 26How can you grow a new pineapple at home from a shop-bought fruit?
Plant the leafy top
Plant the leafy top: twist it off, strip the lower leaves, let it dry for a day or two and root it in soil; commercial growers instead plant side shoots called suckers and slips.
Q 27Roughly how long does a commercially grown pineapple take from planting to first harvest?
About 18 months
About 18 months, typically 14 to 20, pass between planting a slip or sucker and the first harvest; growers then take a smaller second crop from the ratoon shoots.
Q 28Where was Hawaiian pizza invented?
Chatham, Ontario, Canada
Sam Panopoulos created Hawaiian pizza in 1962 at his Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, naming it after the brand of canned pineapple he topped it with.
Q 29Which country's president joked in 2017 that he would ban pineapple on pizza if he could?
Iceland
Iceland's president Guðni Th. Jóhannesson told high-school students in Akureyri in February 2017 that he would ban pineapple on pizza if he could; the remark went viral worldwide.
Q 30Pineapple juice, coconut cream and rum make which cocktail?
Piña colada
The piña colada, Spanish for 'strained pineapple', blends pineapple juice, coconut cream and white rum, shaken or blended with ice and garnished with a pineapple wedge or cherry.