One of the joys of moving to a new location is seeing what the plants bring with each season. There are holly bushes whose branches hung low with the weight of bright red berries at Christmas. A plant that I was unfamiliar with, four-o’clock flower, surprised me with its magenta blossoms that open only at, you guessed it, four o’clock. I’ve had serviceberry trees before, but the one in my new yard has loads of berries on it that the birds seem to love. Because I chose the word “abundance” as my word to live into for 2025, it’s fitting that my yard is overflowing with new growth.
Not only is it my yard that has awoken this spring to new-to-me blooms and berries, but my neighbors’ yards, too. The house next door to me has a grape trellis with vines, a rose of Sharon that’s blooming now, and a healthy lantana just starting to blossom. But there was another small tree/large shrub that stumped me with its bright orange flowers. My iPhone identified it as a pomegranate. A pomegranate? Do we grow pomegranates in Alabama? Evidently.
I took a deep dive. Seems it originated in Mesopotamia and has been domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean for over seven thousand years, one of the first domesticated fruit trees. It then spread to other parts of Asia, as well as Africa, Europe, and the Americas. It was introduced in California by the Spanish in the late 18th century. I also learned that Alabama has an ideal climate for growing pomegranates. Who knew?
I love pomegranates—the shiny red skin that dulls and pits as it ages, the plethora of jewel-like fruits hidden within and tethered to its white pith, the tangy taste, and their rich symbolism.
What I am seeing on my neighbor’s shrub are bright orange flowers, about one inch long, with thick outer petals, and delicate inner ones, all surrounding many, many stamen, the part of the flower that produces pollen. As the flowers mature, I’ve seen the thicker outer petals close over the now dried out stamen to form the pomegranate’s signature crown-like top. Inside this early pod, the fertilized ovaries of the flower begin to develop into seeds, swelling the fruit over time until it’s mature.
I have found that no one technique for opening a pomegranate and extracting its multiple glossy, garnet seeds, called arils, seems better than another. Once extracted, one eats the entire aril, including the interior seed. It’s an explosion of bright flavor as the thin skin of the arils are breached, followed by a gentle chewiness of the tasteless seed inside. I like to pop a handful of them in my mouth and savor all the sensations. I don’t, however, like that the crimson juice stains any surface it touches, including my fingers and my clothing. Besides eating it right after cutting into one, I also like to add the gems of tart vermillion to salads or as a topping on a variety of savory dishes.
The pomegranate has a long history of symbolism. Some theologians think that the serpent’s tempting fruit in the Garden of Eden may have been the pomegranate, thus becoming a symbol of knowledge. In Greek mythology, because Persephone eats the “fruit of the dead,” a pomegranate, she is consigned to live in the Underworld for half the year before returning to the surface of the Earth to bring it back to life. Here, it symbolizes Earth’s yearly cycles of regenerative life. This theme of rebirth carried into early Christian art when both the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus were sometimes depicted holding a pomegranate—a foreshadowing of Christ’s passion (the blood red juice of the arils), death, and resurrection—and more fully, a symbol of abundant, eternal life.
So I’ll be studying my neighbor’s pomegranate tree as its fruit ripens, living into my year of abundance. I might even pick one for myself.