Pineapple, Piña Terrestrial, to ca 1 m tall. Leaves forming a basal rosette; blades sword-shaped, heavily armed on margin. Inflorescences globular or ellipsoid, headlike, borne on a stout stem much shorter than leaves; flowers bisexual, sterile, sessile, spirally arranged and sunken into dense, swollen, pulpy rachis; calyx very short; petals with 2 ligules at base; ovary inferior; style filiform, 3-branched. Fruits syncarps formed of the spiny-toothed floral bracts, the aborted ovaries, and the thickened, fleshy, sweet, edible rachis. Cultivated at the Laboratory Clearing. Native to Brazil; widely cultivated in the tropics.