“It frequently happens that Pine Apple plants designed to bear fruit do not show their fruit early enough in the spring or fore-part of summer, to ripen their fruit before winter, when there is not sunshine enough to give the fruit any flavour. This may happen because the plants have not come to a proper growth, or their roots may have been injured by too violent a bottom heat, or by being over-watered, or they may have been shifted too late, or been put into pots too large for their roots to have filled them before the end of the growing season. To make Pine plants shew their fruit at an early time in the spring, some authors have recommended the cutting off some of the roots at the autumn shifting; but long experience has convinced me, that cutting off the roots, or destroying them by any means, instead of making them show fruit, is an effectual mean to prevent them from showing fruit, till they have again made long roots. The fruit of the Pine Apple is formed, probably, not less than seven or eight weeks before it appears among the leaves; and if a plant be divested partially or totally of its roots, its growth is stopped till it has made roots of considerable length, when it will grow quickly. And, if before the roots were destroyed, the fruit had been formed in the hidden secret centre of the plant, the fruit will grow and show itself when the leaves of the plant, excepting those on the stem of the fruit, will make no appearance of growing. This, perhaps, may be the reason which induces some persons to think that cutting off the roots of the plant causeth it to fruit sooner than it would do were the roots suffered to remain.