PUNICA GRANATUM. THE POMEGRANATE TREE. 
Class XII. ICOSANDRIA. Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, GRANATEflE. THE POMEGRANATE TRIBE. 
The Punica Granatum is a native of the southern parts of Europe, of Arabia, Japan, Persia, and Barbary, 
and is much grown in India and Ceylon. Mr. Crawford says, that in the Indian Archipelago it is found 
only in a cultivated state, and that the finest fruit is brought into Upper India, from Eastern Persia; while 
Olivier, in his travels in the Ottoman Empire, informs us that those of Ghemlek are the finest in Turkey. 
It has also been introduced into the West Indies from Europe, and bears fruit of a very superior descrip- 
tion. It blossoms luxuriantly in our own country, but, as the flowers are generally monsters, fruit is seldom 
met with, and never of a proper flavour. The tree was well known to the ancients, and Yenus is 
fabled to have planted the first in Cyprus. It is said by Theophrastus to inhabit the same spots that the 
myrtle does, but although it is still found in Macedonia, the latter plant is not to be seen with it. Accor- 
ding to Dierbach* it was esteemed by Hippocrates; and Pliny refers to it in the following terms: “Interior 
Africa ad Garamantas usque, et deserta palmarum magnitudine, et suavitate constat, nobilibus maxime circa 
delubrum Hammonis. Sed circa Carthaginem Punicum malum cognomine sibi vindicat.” — lib. xiii. ch. 
19, p. 197- 
This tree rises to the height of eighteen or twenty feet; it is covered with a brownish bark, and is di- 
vided into many slender branches, which are armed with spines. The leaves are opposite, or ternate, about 
three inches long, sessile, wavy, entire, oblong or lance-shaped, pointed at both ends, and of a bright green 
colour, destitute of dots, and without marginal veins. The flowers are large, of a rich scarlet colour, solitary, 
or two or three together ; and are produced at the extremities of the young branches, from June to Septem- 
ber. The calyx is turbinate, thick, fleshy, of a fine red colour, and divided into five acute segments, which 
are valvate in aestivation. The corolla is composed of five large roundish wrinkled petals, rather spreading, 
and of a scarlet colour. The stamens are indefinite and perigynous, the filaments capillary, furnished with 
oblong yellow anthers, 2-celled, and bursting in front by two chinks. The germen is inferior, roundish, with 
a simple style, the length of the stamens, and capitate papulose stigma. The fruit is as big as an orange, 
globular, somewhat compressed, and indehiscent; it contains numerous angular, exalbuminous seeds, each 
enveloped in a distinct very juicy rose-coloured pulp, and is crowned with the limb of the calyx, and covered 
with a thick tawny coriaceous rind, which is the calycine tube. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — The flowers ( Balaustra of the ancientst) are of a beauti- 
ful red colour, nearly inodorous, but somewhat of a styptic taste. The juice, which is contained in the mem- 
branous cells, exhales a vinous smell, when fresh; it is of an agreeable subacid flavour, is refreshing, and 
contains a great deal of mucilage, united to a little tannin. The bark of the fruit has been used for making 
leather, and, besides mucilage, it contains a volatile oil, and tannin. 
In the south of Europe the pomegranate is cultivated for its fruit ; and, in some places as a hedge plant. 
It is also grown as an ornamental tree, the stem being trained to the height of six or eight feet, and the 
head afterwards allowed to spread and droop down on every side. In the conservatories in the neigh- 
bourhood of Paris, and in France generally, the double flowered variety is planted in large boxes, and treated 
like the orange tree. For this purpose, young plants are grown in the orange nurseries about Nice and 
Genoa, and exported to different parts of the world. Both the single and the double flowered varieties are 
very frequently trained against walls, both in France and Italy ; and the more ingenious cultivators inter- 
* Materia Mediea of Hippocrates. 
f Flos balaustrum vocatum, et medicinis idoneus, et tingendis vestibus, quarum color inde nomen accepit. — Pliny. 1. c. 
