Oviedo finds himself so inadequate to the task of rendering the pineapple in either words or image, he does both and complains about both.

This woodcut does not do justice to the beauty of his manuscript illustration. He places it in the middle of the page, and writes around the drawn pineapple. I will try to scan the image and put it up… I don’t know that I’ll have the time to do it this week though. Till then, here is his attempt to describe it:

And if, by lack of colors in the drawing, I fail to convey what I would like to be able to say, the fault lies in my judgement in which it is, to my eyes, the most beautiful fruit of any of the fruits I have seen, and the one which has the best fragrance and flavor, as well as in it’s size and color, which is green lightened or toned with a very deep yellow, and the more it ripens the more it takes on of the deep yellow and loses the green, at the same time increasing in the fragrance of more than perfect peaches. This is the odor which the fruit resembles most, and the flavor is better than peaches- more juicy. It is peeled all around and cut into round slices or chunks, as the carver desires, for throughout the length and breadth it has a peel, for which a sharp knife is required. Each pine grows on a very sharp thorny thistle with long prickly leaves, very wild; from the middle of this thistle emerges a round stalk which bears only one pine, which takes about 10 months or a year to ripen. Once the fruit is cut, this thistle produces no more fruit and serves for nothing except to litter the ground.

Coconut milk, for all you out there suffering from kidney stones, will break up the stones and let them pass through your piss, he says. So, hop to it, I want to see more coconuts drunk!

^{for more images pineapples}

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