To dream of pomegranates traditionally signifies good health and longevity. Alternatively, they are tied to the myth of Persephone who is said to have become trapped in the underworld (a common symbol of the unconscious) due to her consumption of a pomegranate seed.
(Punica granatum), a bush or small tree (up to 5 m high) of the family Punicaceae. The leaves are leathery, smooth-edged, and usually fall off before winter. The shoots are prickly. The blossoms form on the new year’s growth. Some of them are large and pitcher-shaped and have a normally developed ovary, pistil, and anthers. These blossoms form the fruits. The other blossoms (85–95 percent) are rudimentary, have short pistils, and fall off. Blossoming occurs from May through August. There is cross-pollination. Fruit-bearing begins in the third or fourth year after planting, and full fruit-bearing starts in the seventh or eighth year. The fruits ripen from September to November. With good care, each plant will produce 50–60 kg of fruit. The pomegranate fruit is berry-shaped and round, with a diameter up to 12 cm, and weighs 300–600 g and more. The calyx of the flower is at the top of the fruit. The fruit contains from 400 to 700 seeds and has a leathery red or yellowish pericarp. The edible part, the juicy pulp surrounding the seeds, makes up about 50 percent of the total mass of the fruit. Pomegranates do not require special soils but grow the best and bear the most fruit in deep loam that is rich in organic matter and has a porous, light subsoil. They endure temperatures as cold as -16° C. Pomegranates grow wild in mountainous areas of Middle Asia, Transcaucasia, northwestern India, Iran, Afghanistan, and Asia Minor. In the USSR they are grown in the Crimea, Dagestan, the Transcaucasian republics, and Middle Asia.
The fruit of the pomegranate is used fresh and also for preparing drinks, syrups, and flavoring from the juice. The juice contains 8–19 percent sugars, 0.3–9 percent citric acid, and also tannin and vitamin C. Dried bark from the trunk, branches, and roots, which contains alkaloids, is used in decoctions and extracts as an anthelmintic preparation, and the skin of the fruit is sometimes used to treat colitis. The leaves, the bark of the roots and trunk, and the fruit peels contain large amounts (up to 32 percent) of tannin, which is used for tanning fine leathers and for dye production. The best varieties cultivated in the Soviet Union are Azerbaijan Giulosha, Pink Giulosha, Bala-miursal’, Shakh-nar, and Krmyzy kabukh, all cultivated in Azerbaijan, and Kazake-anar, Achik-Dona, and Kzyl-anar, cultivated in the Middle Asian republics.
Pomegranates are propagated through cuttings, prepared in fall or winter from the most productive plants, or more rarely by layerings or root offshoots. Seedlings are planted in covered crop areas with 5 × 3 m or 4 × 2 m spacing, or in open ground with 5 × 4 or 5 × 5 m spacing. Care during the growing period involves cultivating the soil, clearing weeds, fertilizing, irrigating, and pruning. Pomegranates are valued in decorative horticulture; ornamental varieties include ones with single and double flowers of white, yellow, and red hues. In the central and northern zone of the European USSR they are grown as pot- or tub-plants. Pomegranates are damaged by codling moths, aphids, and mites and are attacked by stem-end rot (branch cancer).
B. S. ROZNOV