punta gorda sugarloaf?

[treefrog]

i think i have two varieties of sugarloaf pineapples.  one, was sold to me as a "kona sugarloaf" by just fruits and exotics of medart, fl.  the other, i bought from a backyard nurseryman who said he collected it on a creekbank in punta gorda, where there used to be a commercial pineapple producer that "went out of business years ago." 
i had thought they were the same variety until lately, when i noticed (painfully) that the punta gorda plant has more developed thorns on the leaf margins than does the "kona."

i did a little research on punta gorda pineapples and found that charlotte county was known as a pineapple capital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
i will be interested to see if there are any differences between the two other than the thorniness.  i repotted the "kona" last spring, and it had a lot of pups or "ratoons," but i have only the one "punta gorda" survivor.  it seems healthy and is (i think) large enough to bear fruit this coming year.  with luck, and a few slips or crown offsets, i can expand my supply of this scion of florida history.

[bradflorida]

Treefrog

That's very interesting.  I used to live one town away from Punta Gorda.  I have driven all over Punta Gorda for 4 years for my job (including Solana, the region just east of town where it was centered around) and i never saw or heard anything about commercial pineapple production in town. 

I found a newspaper article online that says that by the late 1920s the commercial pineapple production had ended in Punta Gorda.  Do you suppose these plants have really survived (reproduced themselves ) for that long unassisted by anyone?

Do you have contact  info for the person  you bought the plant from?  I'd love to grow some, for the idea of preserving a part of local history.

Brad

[davidgarcia899]

There's also the possibility that a pineapple set a seed which sproutedand that's might be what you have

[bradflorida]

Further google research has found an article entitled "The Pineapple Industry in Florida and its Future", presumably written in the 1920s.  In the article, the author states that in the early 1900s the only variety commercially grown on a large scale on the east coast was Red Spanish.  The author says that in areas such as Orlando, Winter Haven and Fort Myers (central and SW florida), the varieties generally grown (under shelter or slatted sheds) were Smooth Cayenne, Abbaka, Golden Queen, Porto Rico, Enville City, and probably some Red Spanish and several others. 

Another article references that in the early 1900s there were about 5-10 families centered around the Solana / Solona (spelled both ways in town) region of Punta Gorda that were growing pineapples commercially, and their farms ranged from 1-5 acres. and that the industry mostly lasted for about 25 years in town (up until 1915 or 1917) and there was apparently an effort in the early 1920s to revive the industry, but it was short lived.

Brad

[bradflorida]

I'd be interested in pinpointing the precise location / creek that your plant originated from, in order to see if it seems to be a random plant or two, or if it seems like remnants from an old pineapple grove.

[treefrog]

"Do you have contact  info for the person  you bought the plant from?  I'd love to grow some, for the idea of preserving a part of local history."

next time i go to that nursery, i'll ask and try to get better info on location.
 

[bradflorida]

Thanks Treefrog!   I appreciate it.

[cmichael258]

Fascinating; hope to hear more about this.

[treefrog]

here it is, blossom/fruit in next few months?  year?  with pineapples, not much happens quickly.

[phantomcrab]

here it is, blossom/fruit in next few months?  year?  with pineapples, not much happens quickly.

It depends on how mature the plant is. In FL, pineapples flower in early spring after cool winter temperatures (<59^o) trigger blooming. Flowering can be forced at any season by ethylene treatment if the plant is old enough.
It is a plant worth watching though. It (and its ancestors) evidently have survived untended for a long time and the voracious FL nematode population has not killed it. Possibly it is resistant to them.

[palmtreeluke]

I know the guy who you got your pineapple from. John with Quincy Nursery.  He grew up In Punta Gorda and grew tropical fruits there. That's where he collected it years ago in the 'woods'. It is different than the pineapples I grew also, so I believe it is something different.

[palmtreeluke]

Here is what John told me about this history of his 'punta gorda sugaloaf'

"There used to be pineapple plantations in Punta Gorda. They froze out in the 1920's I think. The property was planted in citrus but some of the pineapples still grew in the woods along a creek. Then citrus greening destroyed the citrus so the property was fenced to graze cattle. The cows ate all the pineapples. I collected a few about 1990 and grew them in my garden in PG and brought some to Tallahassee. I sold all but one thinking there plenty more, but found out they are gone. An elderly farmer told me the story about the plantations and said they are called sugarloaf. I'm sure the variety is not unique."

[bradflorida]

Very interesting.  Thanks for getting that info!

Brad

[treefrog]

it's sending up a blossom.




for comparison, here's a blossom emerging on my "kona sugarloaf."  raised under the same conditions - the other side of the same greenhouse.





same variety?  close family resemblance?  something different?

too early to tell, in my opinion.

[treefrog]

blossom update:

"punta gorda sugarloaf"




"kona sugarloaf"





the kona showed blossom a week or ten days before the p.g.  the p.g. blossom is presently larger, more brightly colored, and generally more vigorous looking.  i think these may be two different types.  waiting and watching will probably tell us.

[treefrog]

updated photo.  treefrog included for scale

[LivingParadise]

Pineapples were a major commercial crop in the Florida Keys from the 1870s through the 1930s, with the pinnacle at around 1900. In the Upper Keys, a single crop amounted to about 75,000 pineapples! They were shipped by boat, but when the Flagler railroad was built, the Keys pineapple industry was decimated because shipping pineapples from Cuba became extremely easy, and Cuban farmers were paid far less for their labor (plus they had more available land to work) thus the pineapples were far cheaper.

To this day, pineapples still grow very well in the Keys (although the soil here is much poorer due to the development of Miami's canal system, and also the scrapping of good soil for local development), but they were pretty much all cleared due to the extensive development of real estate lots. I would be very surprised if any of the original cultivars were left. I have not seen any record as of yet as to which varieties specifically that they grew.

The Keys also commercially grew limes, tomatoes, sugar apples, oranges, and other crops at that time.

Ironically, after the decimation of the local farming industry due to the railroad, the railroad itself was then decimated in the Labor Day hurricane in 1935, never to be rebuilt (but eventually replaced by the Overseas Hwy).

I find this article from a local historian pretty fascinating, on the history of commercial crops in the Florida Keys: http://www.keyshistory.org/farming.html

[treefrog]

update:  the punta gorda survivor looks like it's getting close to ripe.  taste test this weekend? 
the fruit fell over a few weeks ago, and i propped it up on a piece of pvc pipe to keep it out of the dirt.  so far, no evidence of any kind of offsets - neither ratoons, suckers nor pups.  perhaps it will go into reproductive mode when i harvest the fruit.  i hope so.  another report in a few days when i find out how it tastes.

[Galka]

This is a nice looking fruit. Don't throw away the crown. You can have another plant from it.

[treefrog]

taste report:
i shared this pineapple with friends and family at lunch today.



it was a hit.  fragrant, tender, juicy, sweet, pale yellow flesh.  edible core, very low acidity.  rated against a grocery store smooth cayenne as an arbitrary ten, this one was a fourteen.

drawbacks
a) it was fairly small.  this may be due to being raised in a greenhouse in zone 8b where it only got about 75-80% sun
b) the shell or "rind" was a little tough.  that may be my fault.  i'm not a skilled pineapple peeler, and i may not have cut deep enough.
c) no pups.  i have the plant in the ground, i intend to plant the crown, but so far, no offsets.  hopefully, some will appear in the coming weeks/months.  i would definitely like to have more of this one.

cultivar identification:  still uncertain.  my guess is it's a variant of the  "abacaxi" or "pernambuco" type.  it was conically shaped, and had all the features of that type except for the size.  regardless of what cultivar, it is what it is, and what it is is a pretty nice pineapple.

[Abrew23]

My family, William M. Whitten, owned a large Pineapple Plantation, Cedar Oaks, in Punta Gorda in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

[spoons]

Very nice thread.  Wondering if he ever got any slips or ratoons 3 years ago?

[Quincy Nursery]

Hi this is John. I found the pineapples from Punta Gorda. They had been there for a very long time. Finding feral guavas, citrus, Suriname cherry, sugarcane, pineapples, etc... was pretty common around where I grew up. What was unusual about these is the extent to which they had colonized the creek bank and where able to reproduce and spread in deep shade. I had never had any fruit like that either. I'm sure they where cultivated at one time but where naturalized when I found them.

Good news! I was able to nurse the one survivor back to health. I ate the fruit today. Yum! Just like I remembered. I will be propagating it and starting a colony. I will have plants to distribute in a few years. I will take as many sprouts from the mature plant as it can produce. I'm glad I didn't lose it. I took for granted that they would always be there. I sold about 15 plants from the nursery but never got any feedback. Treefrog got a mislabeled plant I fear because his pictures show spineless leaves. He is first on the list when they are ready.

This is a known variety most likely. Whiter flesh, thorny, red central leaf stripe in the sun, light yellow skin in the sun, darker purplish green in the shade, weedier and taller fruiting stalk than smooth Cayenne in the shade. And one grown in Punta Gorda known as a sugarloaf in the early 1900's, or so I was told. Please identify if possible.

Thanks

[Jungle Yard]

I found that Agristarts propagates pineapple they call “Florida Special”. Here is their description:

“Bred for Florida pineapple production by Libby fruit company. At one time there where 240 acres planted in Immokalee, FL prior to Libby selling to Nestle. Florida Special Pineapple produces a golden-fleshed fruit with great flavor. Ripening fruit has shown to take temperatures down to the mid 30's without internal damage.”

https://www.agristarts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.plantDetail/plant_id/478/typeID/54/index.htm