Punica granatum

The pomegranate

Photo by Zeynep on Unsplash

The lusty pomegranate, packed with its juicy, blood red arils, has a very long history. Probably originating from the area between Iran to northern India and cultivated from around 2000 BCE, the pomegranate features in traditional medicine, cuisine, and in religion and myth. Pomegranates are, botanically speaking, berries. Each berry is packed with seeds and each seed is encased in juicy flesh called an aril.

Arils, if you squint you can see the seed inside

I have to confess, the etymology of Punica granatum sent me down an infuriating rabbit hole, but more about that in a bit. For now, I’d like to enumerate all the reasons pomegranates are not like grenades. Stick with me for a bit, I promise this will all make sense.

Let’s start with science, because here, pomegranates pack a punch. Scientists have analyzed the flowers, peels, arils, and the seeds and found that pomegranates have antiviral, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-diabetic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-fungal, and anti-obesity properties and can help boost liver and reproductive health.

Many of the traditional medicinal uses I came across had to do with fluxes. In ye olden times fluxes were anything that leaked out of your body when you didn’t want it too. Think blood, bile, phlegm, pus, and other fun stuff we don’t need to mention. Different parts of pomegranates were used to stop the flow of different fluxes. Pomegranates are rich in tannins which essentially tighten bodily tissues. You can feel it when you eat the seeds, they’re very juicy, but your mouth still feels a little dry and puckery after you eat them. That’s tannins tightening up your mouth skin. It’s possible the various poultices, baths, and tinctures prescribed for fluxes could have worked by tightening up whatever happened to be leaking.

Pomegranates also contain antioxidants, minerals like calcium and magnesium, protein, vitamins like C and E, and a lot more stuff with complicated chemical names that would definitely be too boring to list but are still really cool. There’s a reason pomegranates have earned the “superfood” label.

In addition to being superfoods, pomegranates throughout history have been super holy as well. From the Assyrians to the Iranians, Zoroastrians, Palestinians, to ancient Greeks, Egypt, China, India, Armenia, and in the Abrahamic traditions the pomegranate is a symbol of fecundity, prosperity, and connection to the divine. The fruit is associated with Aphrodite and Hera and hence love and childbirth. Through Persephone and her fateful eating of a pomegranate seed in the Underworld, the pomegranate became associated with the resurrection of Christ and the cycles of life more broadly. In the Jewish tradition, the pomegranate is said to contain as many seeds as there are teachings of God. In Egypt they were frequently associated with immortality. In India pomegranates were lauded for their ability to increase vitality and spirituality. And the list goes on. I could tell you stories for days, seriously.

Pomegranates are an incredibly important food, both historically and in the present, and they have consistently been associated with life, spirituality, and abundance. It is here, though, that we’ve come to grenades. How did we get here? Because an old French word for the pomegranate is pomme-grenade and I can’t let things go. The word “grenade” dates from the late 1500s. See this quote below from 1656 explaining the correlation between pomegranates and grenades.

Granato (Span.) a Pomegranate, an Apple filled with delicious grains ; there is also a warlike Engin that being filled with Gunpowder and other materials is wont to be shot out of a wide mouthed peece of Ordnance, and is called a Granado, for the likeness it hath with the other Granado in fashion, and being fully stuffed as the other Granado is, though the materials are very different. [Blount’s “Glossographia,” 1656]

Pomegranate and grenade
Stuffed with different materials indeed
One with seed, and one with anti-seed

Imagine a bride and groom entering their home after the wedding. Maybe they’re alone, maybe they have a happy crowd of friends and family cheering them on. The bride holds up a ripe, heavy, red pomegranate and hurls it against the floor (or the wall in some traditions). The fruit splits apart. The happy couple, or maybe their guests, laughing and expectant, rush to gather up any seeds that have scattered as the fruit broke. The number of seeds that escaped the fruit equals the number of children the new couple should expect to have. Maybe it’s here that the family departs, leaving the happy couple with well wishes and knowing smiles to start a family of their own.

Or maybe it was a grenade crashing through the window. Its shrapnel, loosed from its cold grey shell, will ensure no one in that room ever bares a child.

I suppose for a fruit so prevalent in folklore and mythology I shouldn’t be surprised that this correlation with grenades was made, but I still hate it. Conflating something so spiritually important throughout time with something as base as ordnance is disquieting, if unsurprising. I don’t have any grand or earth shattering insights. I’m just… tired of war.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!