284 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. 



When growing, in its natural manner, the pomegranate 

 is usually of inconsiderable stature, more of a great bush 

 than a tree, not unlike an unmolested hawthorn, very 

 branchy and very twiggy, disposed to be spinous, and 

 seldom found with a clear and pillar-like stem, unless 

 the lower branches have been removed. The leaves are 

 lanceolate, usually about two inches in length, entire, and 

 of a fresh, bright green, which in autumn, before they fall, 

 gives place to pink and deep amber. The superb flowers 

 are produced at the extremities of the young and leafy 

 shoots. Individually they consist of a deep scarlet caly- 

 cine tube or ovary-case, an inch in length, with, at the 

 summit, usually five great fleshy lobes, between which 

 there are seated as many petals of the most brilliant 

 crimson rose-colour, a crowd of crimson stamens pro- 

 jecting from the centre. No wonder that the young 

 Hebrew ladies in the time of the patriarchs employed the 

 opening flower-buds as ear-drops. The snowdrop is the 

 beau-ideal of the chaste and maidenly as an ornament for 

 the feminine ears ; the pomegranate-bud is the beau-ideal 

 of the rich and massive, comporting peculiarly well with 

 raven tresses. The nearest approach to the colour of the 

 petals among plants better known in England is found in 

 the common corn-poppy, Papaver JRhceas, the specific 

 name of which brilliant wild-flower is based upon the 

 ancient Greek one of the pomegranate. 



The ovary, when ripe, becomes somewhat globose, 

 ruddy and tawny, or deep golden tinged with red, three 

 to five inches in diameter. The calycine lobes are per- 



