Text and pictures by Eki Qushay Akhwan
This is how pineapples are sold here: hanged!
Makeshift stalls selling nanas/nenas (the Indonesian word for pineapples) like in the bottom photo can be found in many parts of the city. This one is on Setiabudhi street in the north of Bandung, right across the street from the Indonesia University of Education campus.
These pineapples come from Subang, a town and regency about 60 kilometers north of Bandung. Nanas Subang are known for its larger size, and not too sweet and more juicy flesh. Subang is Indonesia's second largest producer of pineapples after Lampung in the southern part of Sumatra island.
Bits and Pieces about Pineapples
Pipeapples (ananas comosus) are not native to Asia. They are originally from South America (Brazil and Paraguay) where they are called nanas.
The pineapple is not a single fruit as it appears to be, but a collection of multiple, spirally-arranged flowers, each of which produces a fleshy fruit that becomes pressed against the fruits of adjacent flowers, forming what appears to be a single fleshy fruit.
"Pineapple," the English word for this kind of fruit, was originally used to name what we now call "pine cone" - the reproductive organ of conifer tree. The use of this word was first recorded in 1398. Europeans discovering nanas called it pineapple because of this fruit's resemblace to what we now call "pine cone". The use of the word "pineapple" that refers to this kind of fruit was first recorded in 1664.
(source: Wikipedia).
