The different modes of cultivating the pine-apple / From its first introduction into Europe to the late improvements of T.A. Knight, esq.

by J. C. Loudon

9

Insects. Those which more immediately infest the Pine, were first described in Speechly’s book. They are all species or varieties of the Linnean order Hemiptera, and genus Coccus. The first is the brown turtle bug, Coccus hesperidum ([Fig. 9.]) The female has at first the appearance of a flat scale (a); afterwards, when depositing its eggs, it becomes fixed and turgid (b); these eggs (c) are hatched under the mother, who soon afterwards dies; the young insects, seen under a magnifier, appear like turtles in miniature (d). Only the males, (e), which are few in proportion to the females, have wings; these devour nothing, and having performed the office of impregnation, die.

The white scaly bug, C. hesp. var. α (f to l) bears a considerable resemblance to the above; but the scale (f) is somewhat smaller; the colour is white, and the males or flies (l) not so large as those of the brown.

The white mealy crimson-tinged bug, C. hesp. var. ϐ (n and m) differs from the former in being larger and crimson-coloured. Speechly considers it as viviparous. This and the former species are much the most pernicious.

Mr. Speechly’s mode of destroying these and other insects, being much too elaborate for modern practice, it would be a waste of time to repeat his processes. Simple modes are always the most effectual, and nothing can be more so than M’Phail’s mode of applying the steam of water; or Baldwin’s, that of horse-dung.

Fruit produced. Mr. Speechly does not seem to have had a fixed object as to the production of fruit, unless it was to have it good. Some cultivators, as Justice, aim at having all the fruit ripe at that season when they will attain the greatest size and most flavour, viz. in August and September; others aim at having some weekly throughout the year. It would appear that the former was Speechly’s object, and that he did not contemplate the other as now generally practised. “Large fruiting plants,” he says, “will sometimes show their fruit in the months of August and September, but these are generally thought of no value, and, consequently, thrown away. To prevent this, I frequently take such plants out of the hot-house as soon as their fruit begin to appear. I then set them in a shed or out-house for five or six weeks; at the expiration of which time I pot them as in the month of March, after shaking off their balls. After this I plunge them into the tan.”

What was the common weight of the Queen Pines produced at Welbeck, he does not inform us; but a fruit of the New Providence, produced in the gardens at Welbeck in 1794, weighed 5¹⁄₄ lb., or 84 oz. He generally fruited the Queen Pine in the third season, being under two years of time; and the Providence and Antigua in the fourth season.

Sect. VII.
Culture of the Pine Apple by James M’Phail, gardener to the late Earl of Liverpool, at Addiscombe, in Surrey, from 1788 to 1808.

Mr. M’Phail, when in practice, was reckoned one of the first growers of the Pine Apple in England; he grew the plants, and also fruited them chiefly in pits; the pots plunged in bark, and the bark inclosed by a perforated wall of his invention, and heated by linings of dung. He also grew them in larger buildings.