Pomegranate

Family

Lythraceae

Habit

Tree

Height

5.5 m

Spread

5 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

120 years

First yield

after 3 years

Hardiness

zone 8–11

Shade tolerance

light shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

very dry – very moist

pH

6 – 7.5

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: What is edible on a pomegranate is not the flesh in the usual sense but the juicy seed coat: each of the 300 to 400 seeds sits in a translucent, pink to deep red aril with a sweet-sour, aromatic taste. The leathery rind and the membranous partitions are bitter and are discarded. To open the fruit, score it several times and break it apart into segments. Juice makes up about 37 percent of the fruit; it can be extracted with a citrus press and forms the basis for syrups, sorbets and grenadine. In Middle Eastern cooking the arils accompany meat, fish and salads, and go into fruit salads and jellies. Per 100 grams the fruit contains around 16 grams of carbohydrate and 10 milligrams of vitamin C. The juice leaves stains on fabric that water will not remove.

Medicinal: The pomegranate is among the longest medicinally used crop plants. Fruit and rind were traditionally used for diarrhoea and ulcers; root, stem and fruit rind were regarded until the Middle Ages as a powerful tapeworm remedy and appear in pharmacy as Cortex Granati. The active constituents are alkaloids of the pelletierine type. The fruit itself is credited with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, attributed to polyphenols such as punicalagin, punicalin and ellagic acid, and to anthocyanins.

Other uses: Color flowers and husks of unripe fruits (red/black) for ink, dried husks for yellow dye; Tannin content over 20% (from dried husk, bark, root bark) for ink; Wood (very hard, compact, dense-grained, durable, yellow) for agricultural tools.

The pomegranate needs a long, hot summer to ripen its fruit — five to seven months pass between flowering and harvest. It requires full sun, a very sheltered position and free-draining, moderately fertile soil; it resents heavy, wet substrates but takes drought well. Hardiness is limited: established wood tolerates about minus ten degrees, which restricts planting out to wine-growing climates with additional winter protection. The usual approach in Central Europe is container culture with bright, cool, frost-free overwintering around five degrees. Cultivars from Central Asia and southern Russia such as Salavatski or Kazake are considerably hardier and are rated to zone 6. Pruning is done in spring; the plant can be kept as a shrub or trained on a short trunk.

The simplest route is hardwood cuttings: pieces of well-ripened one-year-old shoots about twenty centimetres long, cut in late winter, root reliably with bottom heat and give true-to-type plants. Semi-ripe cuttings in summer also work but need high humidity. Since the plant resprouts readily from the base, layering and detached root suckers can be used as well. Sowing is straightforward — fresh seed cleaned of pulp germinates warm within a few weeks — but does not come true and takes several years to reach first flowering. It is worth doing mainly when selecting deliberately for hardier seedlings.

The striking coral-red flowers of the pomegranate open in June and July and yield nectar generously. Besides honeybees and the three wild bee species recorded on it in Central Europe, it is chiefly flower beetles of the genera Cetonia and Trichodes that effect cross-pollination; the hermaphrodite flowers can also self-pollinate. As a larval food plant the pomegranate is irrelevant here, since native moths and butterflies are not adapted to it. Its ecological contribution in a Central European garden is therefore limited to summer forage, which at least falls into a flower-poor period. As it is grown almost exclusively in containers and moved under cover for winter, any role as cover or nesting habitat is ruled out.

Notes: Needs 5-7 months from flower to ripe fruit → wine-growing climate or container culture only; hardy to about -10°C, cultivars Salavatski+Kazake to zone 6; flowers borne at the tips of current-year shoots → thin only lightly in spring or lose the crop; three flower forms (bellied urn-shaped hermaphrodite fertile, bell-shaped male sterile) → only the bellied ones set fruit; cross-pollination improves yield; fruit does not ripen after picking → let it colour on the bush, then stores for months at 0-5°C; juice+rind stain permanently;

Southeast Europe to East Asia - Himalayas.

In the forest, various animal species such as deer, foxes, and birds live. The steppe, on the other hand, is characterized by vast grasslands where gazelles and zebras live. Farmland is cultivated by farmers and provides space for growing crops and vegetables.