No European had any experience of Bromeliads until Christopher Columbus in the late fifteenth century landed on the island of Guadalupe and encountered the cultivated bromeliad which became the famous edible Pineapple (Ananus comosus). He was told it came from the northern areas of South America (The actual place origin is unknown). Columbus took some samples of this “very delicious and refreshing to the taste” fruit back to Spain as gifts for the authorities and the King. The fame of the pineapple spread to all parts of Europe. The first drawing of the pineapple was published in Spain in 1535 in the “Historia Universal de las Indias Occidentalis”.