Among the by-products of the pineapple industry is the enzyme, bromelain, used in the food industry, the leather industry and in medicine. Some cultivars of pineapple are cultivated for the strong white silky fibre which can be extracted from their leaves. In the Philippines this fibre is woven to produce 'pina', a light-weight sheer but fairly stiff fabric, which is often embroidered and used for table linen or clothing. The pineapple is a member of the family Bromeliaceae. This family of some 2000 species, almost entirely restricted to the New World tropics and subtropics, exhibits a great diversity of plant form.
Many species have attractive, often brightly coloured foliage, flowers and fruits.
They range in size from moss-like species of Tillandsia to the enormous Puya raimondii from the Andes which produces a flowering stem up to 5 m tall. Most bromeliads are epiphytic - that is they grow supported on other plants but without harming their hosts by abstracting nutrients from them as a parasite would. Many of them grow perched on trees in the tropical rainforests and cloud forests where atmospheric humidity or rainfall is high enough for them to obtain the water they need to survive. The pineapple is fairly unusual in the family in being a terrestrial species. A number of the epiphytic bromeliads, including Billbergia , Aechmea and Neoregelia, are known as urn plants because their overlapping leaves form funnels in which water collects.