Pineapple (now termed pine cones). When European explorers encountered this tropical fruit in the Americas, they called them "pineapples" (first referenced in 1664, for resemblance to pine cones). In the scientific binomial "Ananas comosus", "ananas", the original name of the fruit, comes from the Tupi word "nanas", meaning "excellent fruit", as recorded by André Thevet in 1555, and "comosus", "tufted", refers to the stem of the fruit. Other members of the genus "Ananas" are often called pine, as well, in other languages. The pineapple is a herbaceous perennial, which grows to tall, although sometimes it can be taller. In appearance, the
Boletellus ananas named by Moses Ashley Curtis as "Boletus ananas" in 1848, based on specimens he found near the Santee River, in South Carolina. In 1909, William Murrill described the new genus "Boletellus" and made "Boletellus ananas" the type species. According to Murrill, the taxon "Boletus isabellinus", described by Charles Horton Peck in 1897 from specimens collected in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is a synonym of "B. ananas"; Peck described this species from undeveloped specimens. Wally Snell later doubted Murrill's conclusion in a 1933 publication; he considered the differences in the spore structure too great to consider the species conspecific with "B. ananas",