Plant · P-424

Pomegranate

Punica granatum

Pomegranate needs a long, hot, dry summer to ripen its arils, and counterintuitively it is humidity rather than cold that limits it - flowers can abort in muggy weather and wet autumns split the ripening fruit. Left unpruned it suckers into a dense thorny thicket, useful as a stock-proof hedge and a nuisance anywhere else. Its astringent bark and rind have over three thousand years of recorded medicinal use against parasites and gut infections, but the same alkaloids that paralyse tapeworms are dangerous in overdose.