Pomegranates fruit of myth and mystery

The constant gardener

Pomegranates: As a child, you'd have to know it's delicious before you'd be tempted to eat one of these.

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To some, pomegranates mean Christmas. In England, this odd- looking fruit would appear in the shops around the middle of winter - Christmas time - and one would often be found at the bottom of your Christmas stocking. It was always a treat, because they took so long to eat, making the pleasure last longer. The smooth, round fruit has a leathery outer skin and to eat it, you can peel this thick skin off or cut the fruit in half. Inside, the fruit is divided into compartments packed full of strange, fleshy red cells surrounding each seed. You can spend ages picking away at these opaque jewels with a pin or, if you're feeling greedy, take several at a time with a spoon. The taste is very sweet - "like eating roses", my wife, Gail, says.

But they don't look appetising. As a child, you'd have to know it's delicious before you'd be tempted to eat one of these.

You know those animal documentaries where the mother shows the cubs what's good to eat? Well, pomegranates are like that. You need your mother to say, This is OK. Take care what clothes you wear when eating them, as the juice stains clothes forever (and your mother wouldn't like that).

If you try Spanish or Moroccan recipes, you're likely to come across pomegranate juice. You can buy this nowadays in upmarket delis.

The word pomegranate literally means grainy apple, the "pome" bit being apple.

In Latin they're called Punica granatum. Granatum is grainy and Punica is another word for the Phoenicians. They keep cropping up in the Old Testament and were based in Carthage. Hannibal - the man with the elephants - was from Carthage, which is modern-day Tunisia in north Africa. He took his army and his elephants from Spain up over the Pyrenees into France and then over the Alps into Italy and laid siege to Rome and these were known as the Punic wars. Actually, Hannibal wasn't such a bad bloke - for a warmonger, that is. The only reason he invaded Italy was because he was fed up with Rome attacking his homeland all the time. He didn't want to conquer it so much as say "stop it - leave us alone". He had the chance to finish Rome off, but chose instead to retreat and then dithered and dithered. Finally he was packed off home to protect Carthage and ended up committing suicide before the Romans could get him.

Anyway, back to pomegranates. They have been cultivated for millennia, being one of the first fruits of domestication. Originally from the Iran/Iraq region, it spread along the silk route to China, where there are still thriving orchards near the old capital of Xian. We're not hot enough here in New Zealand to grow them as a fruiting bush, but we can grow the mini or Nana version as an ornamental. It's a rounded bush usually around knee- to waist-high, though it can get to be shoulder-high in time. They're hugely popular in Europe and the United States these days, so it won't be long before you see the bushes for sale in every supermarket. The main selling points are its small size and the cute reddy-orange flowers. These flowers look like scrunched-up carnations and the crumpled petals look like crepe paper.

Pomegranate plants never look appealing, somehow. The bush always looks rather scruffy, even though it does have nice, shiny leaves. The stems seem to shoot out in every direction like a bad- hair day. In theory, the bright red flowers contrasting with the grass green leaves should set the bush up as an ornamental, but even that doesn't do it, somehow. But it would make a good hedge, because it's dense and slightly thorny. The bush is mostly deciduous; it can never seem to make up its mind in our mild climate, but does eventually drop its leaves in winter. It loves full sun and as much heat as possible. For the fruiting varieties, blistering hot summers, cold winters and poor soil suit it best.

It's one of those plants that prefers a continental climate. It can handle horrendous winters if the summers are hot enough to ripen the wood. Tough climates like parts of Spain suit them well, where the term granatum gave rise to the city name of Granada. The French word grenade is also from this source.

The thick rind of pomegranate fruits contain high levels of tannin and this was used to create the famous Spanish leather.

Pomegranates are steeped in history and myth. Because of the multiple seeds, they were associated with fertility. Venus, the goddess of love, supposedly gave them to her lovers.

Pomegranates symbolise resurrection and this dates back to Greek myths about Hades, god of the underworld, who kidnapped Persephone to make her his wife. Her mother, Demeter, was understandably wild about this and as the earth mother, she began decimating crops in protest. Hades was told to hand Persephone back, but he said this could only happen if Persephone had not eaten any food in the land of the dead. Just to make the story interesting, she mucked things up by eating six pomegranate seeds, which meant she had to spend six months underground with the dead. This was the myth behind the world's six months of winter. The rebirth then happens in spring, when she goes back to Demeter above ground (which is the resurrection).

The Romans kept the myth but changed the names to Pluto, god of the underworld, Proserpina, his wife, and Ceres, her mother, from which we get the word cereal for life-bringing food. Christians also use the fruit as a sign of rebirth and many religious paintings show the boy Jesus holding a pomegranate as a sign of the resurrection. If held by the Madonna, it's a sign of chastity.

In one of my favourite paintings in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Sandro Botticelli manages to have both holding the fruit in his famous painting Madonna of the Magnificat, painted in the early 1480s. It's easy to date Botticelli's paintings because he used his sons as sitters, so if the angels are young, his children were young at the time. Sitters were expensive, so it was cheaper to use inhouse models.

Imagine the scene.

"C'mon, boys, I need you to sit for me."

"Aw, Dad, do we have to? It's stopped raining and they're playing football outside."

- © Fairfax NZ News