I've seen photos of pineapple fruit with multiple tops, all fairly small, but I thought they were more an ornamental one. Obviously they're around now, what was rhe fruit like? Have no idea whether they might be GM. All mine have single tops but the parent plants usually get multiple pups after fruiting.

I have seen pics of the multiple tops one one pineapple also. I read that those with multiple tops don't taste good. I know that's a matter of opinion and never had tried one but saying I read that. I think they say sometimes the smooth cayenne variety are the ones that sometimes have this happen to them.

In the case of my original post I was saying that when I plant a crown or a top the top is rooting and a new plant starts to grow and that plant that is growing from the original crown is off to one side. For years that is what the standard growth is but recently I have noticed that when I plant the crown/top not one but two plants start growing from the original crown and I am not sure why. The first time that happened a few years ago I got lazy and didn't water and the plants died. This time I just planted one a few months ago and I see two plants growing again from one crown so I'm going to water and take care of it and see what happens. I'm curious about this. I don't see any info on the Internet about this. I am just curious if these pineapples are genetically engineered so when they plant a crown the crown gives birth to two plants in order to get two pineapples from one planting because two plants grow from the one crown. I'll have to take a photo and place it on here so I can show you guys.

Thanks for your interest.

I see what you mean. I've never had that happen with any of mine in many years of growing them. You'd think sharing the one root system the fruit would be smaller. But maybe that's what they want. Here with mangos the market price for fruit increases with size of fruit up to a medium size, then price drops off as the fruit gets larger. The dealers believe the public prefers the medium size rather than the large.

tropicbreezent, I will post a photo of the pineapple top that is sprouting two plants and over the months I'll post pics as an update to progress of the plant. If you can follow this discussion for a couple of years you'll see if it does produce two full sized pineapples, one per plant. I'll not neglect it this time like the others and see if we get something good from it. Thanks for your input.

We had a speaker retired from Dole pineapple at our Fruit club meeting. He said you can divide the crown and get get 4 plants from each one. I assumed by splitting it you would cause each one to pup before it died.

rednofl, interesting. I always wondered if I did divide a crown in half if I'd get two plants growing but never thought about dividing in 4 parts. So my whole crown is just producing 2 plants as if I had cut it in half.

I guess maybe Dole and other companies divide theirs in half or quarters to grow more from one crown. That makes sense in order to keep production at a maximum. They would need to in order to keep up with demand. Next time I am in Hawaii I'll go to a pineapple field and see if it's freshly planted and see if all the pineapples crowns were divided or quartered.

Interesting though that only recently I've seen my crowns grow more than one plant but never before has this happened.

Thanks for the info.

I've heard of crowns being split before. Usually it's done when there's a shortage of planting material.

The pineapple tops I planted were "Tropical Gold" variety, grown in Hawaii. I know that Del Monte completely stopped production in Hawaii but Dole still has some there. Most of the time if I buy a pineapple that is Dole it will say Product of Costa Rica but if I'm lucky I'll get a Dole grown in Hawaii. Why lucky, what's better about Hawaiian than Costa Rican? Not sure but it just seems more of a rarity now to get a Hawaiian grown pineapple than a Costa Rican. Also the Hawaiian ones I recently got were very sweet and looked to be ripened on the plant and not cut off green. Dole says green is ripe but I beg to differ. The Hawaiian ones I got were gold and gold off the plant but the Costa Rican ones I see are always green with no sweet scent.

Question to you, the Hawaiian one the tag has Tropical Gold. From the Dole website Topical Gold are grown in Latin America, I suppose Costa Rica to be specific. So would you say that the ones in Hawaii are the exact breed as in Latin America since both are called Tropical Gold? Or do you think there is some variation in the Tropical Gold variety between Hawaii and Costa Rica?

What is the difference between Tropical Gold and the Smooth Cayenne varieties? The Dole page doesn't go into that but just say that Dole started with Smooth Cayenne and then developed the Tropical Gold 100 years later.

Thanks

Pineapples are being grown in Costa Rica because Chester Skotak lives there and he has 20 yrs in developing sweeter and juicey fruits. So the commercial stuff moved closer to him.

I have a pineapple plant in a pot that hasn't flowered but it keeps growing offspring... is that normal?

yeah some pineapple plants will send up alot of Pups and some wont but if your plant hasn't fruited already you can force it to fruit buy cutting an apple in half putting part of the apple in the center of the pineapple plant than covering the whole plant with a bag for a few days than remove the bag and in about a month or so it should flower

The second plant steming is called a sucker refer to youtube. There's a guy on there that is very knowledgable.

I have planted a double crown pineapple and Fred two small pineapples