Perhaps the thorniest plant commonly found in the Florida garden is Pinguin or Florida Wild Pineapple, also known as Bromelia pinguin.
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For the second time this particularly hot and dry May these spectacular plants are now in full bloom. 
In a normal year they bloom once-a-year around the first of May.
While this is definitely one of our thorniest plants it is not considered a native. The plant has naturalized as far north as the Ocala National Forest in North Central Florida.
I found my first specimens in the swamps east of Deltona and west of Oak Hill near Canaveral National Seashore. From a few plants transplanted I now have thousands. The plant rapidly reproduces from vigorous rhizomes as well as from the "pineapple" fruit it makes from these dazzling blooms.
The thorns on the leaves are retracted so that they catch anything that passes by. These thorns will easily rip through jeans and into leather boots.
I planted my stand of Florida Wild Pineapple to stop kids-with-guns from walking a path through our acreage, much as is done in the islands where these plants are native. The kids were stopping off at this giant oak (below) to climb and shoot at birds and my cats and dogs. I put up a 4-6-foot fence and planted a few dozen of the wild pineapple. There is no longer any chance of anyone coming through where that trail once existed. The plants now easily extend to 4-feet or more and form a dense thicket across about 1/2 acre.
Referred to as "Maya" in the Caribbean, this pineapple-like plant sports large, sword-shaped, sharp, thorny dark-green leaves that have alternate curved spines about 1/5th-inch (5 mm) long on their edges. The shape of the leaves and the spines makes them impossible to traverse without some serious flesh damage.
Other common names are "karatas," "pingouin," "bayonette," and "pinguin." Although it is mostly fleshy, Florida Wild Pineapple is classed as a shrub because it is perennial, of shrub size (to 6 feet tall), and has a woody core at its base and fibrous leaves.
The plants are formed of a large basal rosette and rarely develop a discernible stem. The roots are shallow, relatively fine, all of a similar size, and radiate in all directions. At the start of a plant’s last year, it grows a stout scape inflorescence with many wooly red-orange flowers, pictured here. The new leaves surrounding the inflorescence are also intensely red-orange.
By July all of these blooms will have formed bunches of 3.5-cm-long elliptical yellow berries which ripen quickly. After the fruits have withered, about 1 year after the start of fruiting, the plant dies. Not to worry, however, the plant makes many more offspring via rhizomes during its final years (more on reproduction below).
The native range of Florida Wild Pineapple extends from Mexico through tropical South America and the Caribbean islands. In Puerto Rico nearly all the stands are on or near abandoned farmland, which may indicate a relatively recent introduction. It has been planted and naturalized in Hawaii and Florida and many other tropical areas.
Florida Wild Pineapple is intermediate in shade tolerance. Although it sometimes grows in open areas, the most vigorous stands are found under forest canopies with moderate basal areas. In Puerto Rico, natural stands occur in areas with from 850 to 2000 mm of rainfall and from near sea level to 600 m of elevation.
All types of soils except very poorly drained and saline soils are colonized. Wild Pineapple is sensitive to fire. Although many plants in a colony will recover from a burn, they do so slowly. Usually flowering is synchronized, although an occasional plant flowers out of phase, especially in moist habitat. Our soil is unconsolidated sands that are at least 85% pure quartz with a dense layer of leaf litter on the surface. The pineapple seems to like that nutrient poor environment.
Florida Wild Pineapple reproduces vegetatively and by seeds. The fruits, whose fresh weight averaged 12.26 + 0.35 gs, contain 0 to over 100 seeds, depending on their size. The fruits have a tough, fibrous rind. Most of the fruits are eaten by fine-toothed animals (probably rats, mice, or fruit bats) and it is assumed that the seeds are dispersed by these small mammals.
The black, teardrop-shaped seeds averaged 0.245 + 0.006 g. Seventy-five percent of these seeds germinated between 133 and 175 days after sowing. The plants are very fragilely rooted at first and develop at a moderate rate.
Florida Wild Pineapple plants grow to full size (3 to 6 feet in height and 6 to 9 feet in diameter) in 2 or 3 years. Mature stands can be dense with interlacing crowns and little clear space.
Historically, and to some extent today, Florida Wild Pineapple has been used as a hedge or living fence to inhibit entry into fields and homesteads. These hedges were never more than marginally effective at stopping wildlife—cattle and many species of animals pass relatively easily—but they are effective at stopping human traffic as their thorns are brutal.
The ripe fruit can be eaten raw or cooked and is used to make a tart drink. It is not recommended to eat the fruit raw, or more specifically undiluted. The raw fruit can be extremely acidic and can burn the lip, tongue and throat. It needs to be diluted. The new leaves and flower stalks can be cooked like vegetables as can the flowers (with stinging hairs removed).
My hand above, for scale
Medicinally the juice of the fruit has been employed for many uses from treating intestinal parasites, fevers, oral ulcers and to induce abortions. Older leaves fibers have been used to make cloth, fishing line, nets and string.
After Florida Wild Pineapple plants have reached their full size and before flowering, most healthy individuals produce one or sometimes two stiff horizontal stolons about 0.5 m long. A new plant forms at the terminus. The new plants grow rapidly and reach roughly half the parent plant’s height and diameter and become independent in about a year. Consequently, (with the exception of those planted by humans) new colonies are started as seedlings from dispersed seeds and most plants within colonies arise vegetatively.
7 Best Memorial Day Beach Reads
for Sports Fans (below)
7 Best Sports Books Summer 2016
Sure, you could swill beer
and ogle bodies on the sand.
Or you could learn something.
1. How Cubs Manager Joe Maddon IDs the Clutch Players
I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Files: Inside the Game We All Love, by Tim Kurkjian
$16.86 at Amazon
"Maddon arranged for a local zookeeper to bring a 25-foot boa constrictor into the clubhouse. 'Some of our guys just left the room as soon as the snake was brought in,' Maddon said. 'Some guys touched the snake, but nowhere near his mouth. And a couple of guys went right up near the head. I thought, Wow, maybe this is the type of guy I'm not going to worry about with two outs in the 9th."
2. The First Sign that Lance Armstrong Was Cheating
Shut Up, Legs!: My Wild Ride On and Off the Bike, by Jens Voigt
$17.76 at Amazon
"In that Tour of Georgia, it took six days of racing and hard, steep uphill finish to Brasstown Bald in Georgia for me to lose 1 minute and 20 seconds to Lance. Two and a half months later in the Tour de France, I was losing 10 to 15 minutes to him a day in the mountains, when I was in peak condition. . . I trained hard. I was healthy. Was I doing something wrong? Or did something else come into play?"
3. The Fascinating (Really!) History of Bowling, and 20 Other Sports
On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody's Favorite Games,by Gary Belsky and Neil Fine
$14.26 at Amazon
"Ninepins was typically played outside of bars and taverns, and as a result the otherwise innocent game was closely associated with a pair of disreputable pursuits: drinking and gambling. That association soon caused many localities to declare the game illegal. Shockingly, this did not stop the American people from either drinking or gambling, and they soon arrived at an ingeniously simple way to skirt the law: adding a 10th pin! By the end of the 19th century, more than 200 10-in alleys were open for business in New York City alone."
4. The Most Valuable Body Part in Professional Sports
$16.19 at Amazon
"The $1.5 billion [that] Major League Baseball spends annually on pitchers' salaries is five times more than the combined cost of every starting quarterback in the NFL. It exceeds the top 200 NBA salaries put together. And yet the most over-analyzed sport in the world, with an industry of bright minds studying its intricacies loses half a billion dollars a year to injuries. [Over half of that goes to pitchers' injuries.] More than 50% of pitchers end up on the disabled list every season, on average for two-plus months, and one quarter of major league pitchers today wear a zipper scar from Tommy John surgery along their elbows."
5. What Elite Athletes Will Do for the Love of Their Sport
Life as Sport: What Top Athletes Can Teach You About How to Win in Life, by Jonathan Fader, Ph.D.
$15.77 at Amazon
"In the annual Race Across America, cyclists test the limits of human endurance in a 3,000-mile trek across the USA. After days of grueling cycling, many of the riders start to lose control of their neck muscles and have to tape their helmets to the back of their seats to stay upright. Exhausted by the effort of pedaling and the lack of sleep, they often hallucinate that they are being chased by mythical creatures. Even in this dazed state, the subconscious mind is still trying to help them complete the goal because their motivation is so deep-seated, internal, and authentic."
6. How You Know You're Training at Your Peak
Today We Die a Little!: The Inimitable Emil Zátopek, the Greatest Olympic Runner of All Time, by Richard Askwith
$18.38 at Amazon
"When the German shepherd realized that Emil and Dana were going running every day, it agitated to go with them. So one day, the three of them would head off on the mountain paths, jogging at first before Emil found somewhere to do more serious training. . . mile after mile, at full speed, culminating in a set of flat-out repetitions around the lake. That evening, the dog's owner was perplexed. 'I don't know what's wrong with this dog,' she said. It showed no inclination to eat or drink, let alone play. It just lay there, exhausted. The next day, Emil came to fetch the dog for another excursion. When it realized who was there, it whimpered and crawled deep into the back of its kennel. It was a reaction with which a growing number of Emil's humans rivals could identify."
7. Why the Italian Men's Soccer Team Sucks
Soccer Without Borders: Jürgen Klinsmann, Coaching the US Men's National Soccer Team and the Quest for the World Cup, by Erik Kirschbaum
$17.65 at Amazon
"Punctuality isn't a virtue of any special merit in Italy. [German-born] Klinsmann showed up on time for practice and was surprised to find himself the only one there. Many of his teammates didn't start arriving until a quarter hour later; their thinking was: Practice starts when everyone gets there. Punctuality and precision are traits that perhaps explain Germany's success in many areas. Trains run on time, workers are paid on time, soccer players come to practice on time."