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.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which continent is the pineapple plant native?
South America
The wild plant comes from the Paraná–Paraguay river basins between southern Brazil and Paraguay.
Q 02What is the pineapple's scientific name?
Ananas comosus
'Ananas' comes from the Tupi word nanas, which most European languages still use for the fruit.
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 in 1493?
Christopher Columbus
He carried it back to Spain and called it piña de Indes, 'pine of the Indians'.
Q 05Why did 17th-century English speakers apply a word for 'pine cone' to the tropical newcomer?
'Apple' then covered any firm, round tree crop
'Pine apple' originally meant a pine cone; John Smith applied it to the tropical fruit in 1624.
Q 06Botanically, what is a pineapple?
A multiple fruit of fused flowers
Each 'eye' on the skin was once a separate flower whose berry fused with its neighbours.
Q 07Roughly how many flowers does a pineapple plant produce to make one fruit?
Up to 200
Some large-fruited cultivars produce even more before the individual fruits join into one.
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
They store the CO2 as malate and release it by day, a water-saving trick shared with cacti.
Q 11Who developed the greenhouse method that finally let Europeans grow pineapples, in the 1600s?
Pieter de la Court
Plants spread from the Netherlands 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
Peter the Great had already imported the Dutch growing method into St Petersburg in the 1720s.
Q 13Why did pineapples become a symbol of wealth in 18th-century Europe?
They cost a fortune to import or raise in heated pineries
Q 21Which country led world pineapple production in 2024?
Costa Rica
Costa Rica, the Philippines and Indonesia each grew about 3 million tonnes of the 29-million-tonne total.
Q 22What is the name of the pineapple enzyme that tenderises meat and stops gelatin from setting?
Bromelain
It is found in every part of the plant, and it is 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.
Roughly what percentage of raw pineapple flesh is water?
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
You still see them on gateposts and finials, a legacy of the fruit's status-symbol days.
Q 15The Dunmore Pineapple, a hothouse topped by a 14-metre stone pineapple, is in which country?
Scotland
It was voted the most bizarre building in Scotland in 1995; its chimneys are disguised as Grecian urns.
Q 16Which cultivar accounts for most of the world's pineapple production?
Smooth Cayenne
It was first imported to France in 1820 and its clones spread via the Pacific to Australia and Africa.
Q 17Which 'Pineapple King' arrived in Honolulu in 1899 and built the company that still bears his name?
James Dole
Nicknamed the 'Pineapple King', he was a cousin once removed of Sanford Dole, president of the Republic of Hawaii.
Q 18Which entire Hawaiian island did the Pineapple King buy in 1922 to turn into a plantation?
Lanai
At over 20,000 acres it became the largest pineapple plantation in the world.
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 20Which company shut its Honolulu pineapple cannery in 1991 as Hawaiian production declined?
Dole
By 2013 only the Dole Plantation on Oahu still grew pineapples in Hawaii, about 0.1 percent of world output.
86%
The rest is mostly carbohydrate, with about 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
Commercial growers plant the side shoots, called suckers, and slips instead.
Q 27How long does a pineapple plant typically take to mature and fruit?
About a year
Growers can induce flowering artificially and harvest early to encourage a second crop of smaller fruits.
Q 28Where was Hawaiian pizza invented?
Chatham, Ontario, Canada
Sam Panopoulos created it at his Satellite Restaurant in 1962 and named it after the brand of canned pineapple he used.
Q 29Which country's president joked in 2017 that he would ban pineapple on pizza if he could?
Iceland
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson made the remark to high-school students and it went viral worldwide.
Q 30Pineapple juice, coconut cream and rum make which cocktail?
Piña colada
It is served blended or shaken with ice and garnished with a pineapple wedge or cherry.