A seductive fruit’s full harvest

Susan Stringfellow’s house in Los Angeles turns heads with its elegant co-mingling of solid and soft, stark and sensual, modern and primitive. In that spirit, when she and Nancy Goslee Power revived its weary landscape, they agreed on one thing: The pomegranate would stay.

“It added age to the design,” Power says. “It’s important to leave a grandparent when redoing a garden.” The smallest of four saved trees — as old as the bones of the just-expanded house — would retain its role as showpiece and focal point in the back garden.

The exquisitely gnarled specimen, most likely pushing 80, is still healthy and productive, with spring flowers as vivid as molten lava. Come late autumn, the sweet-tart fruit plump and blush, just as the leaves yellow and drop. In winter, after the rains, birds revel in the crimson gift of splitting unpicked fruit.

Pomegranates are common in the warmer parts of California, and fruit consumption is a messy ritual of childhood (best, some say, performed outdoors and naked). It’s an ancient crop, cultivated since before the written word, whose popularity is peaking here and abroad as new neighbors share time-honored recipes and remedies. Its blood-red juice brims with antioxidants, adding to its buzz. The native territory of the pomegranate (Punica granatum) ranges from Iran to the Himalayas in Northern India. As fruit trees go, it is long-lived at 100 years or more, though fruitfulness declines with age. (A citrus or persimmon can thrive for 50 years, a peach or plum for 30.)

Even more enduring is the plant’s status in ancient cultures of the Middle and Near East, Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, where fruit may embody fertility or temptation. (Religious scholars now believe that a pomegranate, not an apple, received the fateful bite in the Garden of Eden). The rind produces indelible dye, and the kernel-like arils yield edible pulp, seeds and juice. And all parts, from root to bark to flower, yield tannins for curing leather and a slate of powerful medicines.

The undemanding pomegranate adapts to most soils, needs no more water than citrus and is bothered by few pests. Enterprising farmers in California, Israel and Southern India are planting thousands of acres of pomegranate trees now to meet the future demand of aging cholesterol-conscious consumers.

Indian orchards are dominated by the new cultivar ‘Ganesh,’ a sweet, soft-seeded, yellowish-red pomegranate named for the Hindu elephant god. In a few years, California and Israel can expect a bonanza of tart, winy ‘Wonderful,’ the purple-red 1896 classic that still dominates the industry — and grows in the Stringfellow garden.

“ ‘Wonderful’ is a very good fine variety because of its outstanding color, inside and out. People buy with their eyes,” says Jeff Moersfelder, an agricultural science technician at the USDA-run Germplasm Repository at UC Davis, which shelters almost 140 pomegranate varieties. “The seed texture is relatively soft, and the flavor is a little different in character.” Only one other has the same astringency: ‘Ink,’ so named for its maroon rind, pulp and juice — and deep-red flowers.

As one would expect from a crape myrtle cousin, pomegranate blossoms are large and flashy, with crumpled petals in shades of orange, red and less-common white and apricot.

David Silverstein, pomegranate specialist for the California Rare Fruit Growers, gardens near the coast in San Diego and distributes cuttings received from the Germplasm Repository, a collection and research center, to local chapter members. Silverstein favors soft-seeded varieties, including ‘Parfianka,’ a dark, flavorful low-acid fruit from Turkmenistan, now making its way into nurseries. Others in the collection at Davis originated in Russia, Iran, the U.S. and Japan.

Most of their Japanese cultivars are solely ornamental, with white, orange or red flowers in single and wildly doubled forms. Some produce fruit, others are sterile. Dwarf forms include fruitless ‘Chico’ and widely available ‘Nana,’ with inedible miniature fruit.

In the landscape, Moersfelder says, usage determines how you prune. Closely planted and sheared, prickly pomegranates make a formidable hedge and excellent bird refuge.

But for good fruit production, he recommends hard pruning for shape the first couple of years, then minimal cutting after that. Flowers and fruit develop at the branch tips and on spurs along the stems, and the arresting autumn harvest — dark or pale, tangy or mild — is a healthful bonus and, for many, an integral, important part of family life.

“Food is very important in Persian culture,” says Roshanne Aghevli of Glendale, who emigrated from Iran as a child. Her husband recently planted a tree in their Glendale garden. “We make a dish that’s perfect on cold evenings, with a sauce of pomegranate juice, mashed walnuts and onions that’s served over chicken and rice. And you’ll always find a big display of fruit in every home — oranges, grapes, Persian cucumbers, plums and, in fall and winter, a big pile of pomegranates.”

With finesse, she demonstrates a neat way to eat one: Roll the fruit across a table with your hand, up and back, adding firm pressure. It’s an art to push hard enough to smash the arils without breaking the bitter skin that surrounds them. Take a bite out of the rind, spit it out and suck out the pungent juice.

Pure ambrosia.

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