POMEGRANATE, Punka granatum, a fruit much cultivated in warns countries, and appall • -ly a native of the warmer temperate parts of Asia, perhaps also of the n. of Africa. It has been cultivated in Asia front the most ancient times, and is frequently mentioned in the Old Testament. It has long been naturalized in the s. of Europe. In a wild state the plant is a thorny bush; in cultivation it is a low tree, with twiggy branches, flowers at the extremities of the branches, the calyx red, the petals scarlet. It is generally referred to the natural order myrtacete. The calyx is leathery, tubular, 5 to 7 cleft; there are 5 to 7 crumpled petals; the fruit is as large as a large orange, with a thick leathery rind of a flue golden yellow, with a rosy tinge on one side, not bursting when ripe; the cells filled with numerous seeds, each of which is surrounded with pulp, and separately inclosed in a thin membrane, so that the pomegranate appears to be formed of a great number of reddish berries packed together and compressed into irregular angular forms. The pulp is sweet, sometimes subacid, and of a pleasant delicate flavor, very cooling, and particularly grateful in warm climates. It is often used for the preparation of cooling drinks. A kind of pomegranate without seeds is cultivated and much prized in India and Persia. Pomegranates have long been imported in small
quantities into Britain from Portugal-and the n. of Africa; but have never become an article of general demand and commercial importance like oranges. There is an orna mental variety of the pomegranate with double flowers. The rind of the fruit is very astringent, and a decoction is used as a gargle in relaxed sore throat, and as a medicine in . diarrhea, dysentery, etc. Deriving its astringency from tannin, it is used to tan leather. The finest morocco leather is said to be tanned with it, and small quantities arth imported into Britain from the n. of Africp, for the preparation of the finest kinds of leather, nnder the name of pomegranate bark.—The bark of the roots iS used as an anthelmintic and is often successfully administered in cases of tape-worm. Its value was knoWn to the ancients, and it has long been in use in Indi.•.—The poniegranim tree is occasionally cultivated in hot-houses or green-houses in Britain. It bears the winters of the s. of England in the open air, and is very ornamental. but the fruit is worthless. In some parts of the s. of Europe it is used as a hedge-plant.