376 MANUAL OF TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL FRUITS 



fornia and Arizona, where it should be most acceptable, 

 Americans have not yet learned to appreciate it fully. 



About 150 acres are now planted commercially to pome- 

 granates in California. The total production in the United 

 States, according to the census of 1910, is about 150,000 pounds. 



If allowed to develop naturally, the pomegranate becomes a 

 bush 15 to 20 feet in height. By training, it can be made to 

 form a tree, usually branching close to the ground. It is 

 semi-deciduous or deciduous in habit. The leaves are lanceolate 

 to oblong (sometimes obovate) in form, obtuse, about 3 inches 

 long, glossy, bright green, and glabrous. The handsome 

 brilliant orange-red flowers are axillary, solitary, or in small 

 clusters, and borne toward the ends of the branchlets. The 

 calyx is tubular, persistent, five- to seven-lobed ; the petals, 

 five to seven in number, are lanceolate, inserted between the 

 calyx-lobes. The ovary is embedded in the calyx-tube, and 

 contains several locules in two series, one above the other. 



The fruit is globose or somewhat flattened, obscurely six- 

 sided, the size of an orange or sometimes larger, and crowned 

 by the thick tubular calyx, giving an ornamental effect. It has 

 a smooth leathery skin, which in the ripe fruit ranges from 

 brownish yellow to red in color. Thin dissepiments divide 

 the upper portion into several cells ; below these, a diaphragm 

 separates the lower half, which in its turn is divided into several 

 cells. Each cell is filled with a large number of grains, crowded 

 on thick spongy placentae; these grains, which are many- 

 sided and about | inch long, consist of a thin transparent vesicle 

 containing reddish juicy pulp surrounding an elongated angular 

 seed. The pulp is delightfully subacid in flavor. 



Alphonse DeCandolle reached the conclusion that the 

 "botanical, historical, and philological data agree in showing 

 that the modern species is a native of Persia and some adjacent 

 countries," an opinion which is generally accepted at the present 

 day. The cultivation of the pomegranate, which began in 



