Pomegranate (Punica granatum)
Pomegranate is a fruit- bearing deciduous shrub that can grow between 16 and 36 ft tall. It has oblong, shiny, leathery leaves up to three inches in length, and the scarlet funnel-shaped flower has five-to-eight petals. While the pomegranate is considered indigenous to Iran and neighboring countries, it has long been cultivated throughout the Mediterranean region and can be found in warmer climates all across the Americas. Pomegranates are technically considered a berry! True berries are fleshy fruits that come from a single flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds. So the “fruit” falls into this group.
Pomegranate has been affiliated with abundance, fertility, immortality, prosperity, and the endurance of marriage. It makes sense the “fruit” would be linked to fertility with its multitude of seeds! In one version of the Greek myth, Persephone, daughter of the fertility goddess, Demeter, disobeyed her father, Zeus, and ate some pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, causing Demeter’s distress and the onset of autumn and winter in the world above (i.e., an interruption of fertility). The Greek physician Soranus recorded five prescriptions for either oral contraceptives or vaginal suppositories made from pomegranate seeds or rinds.
Pomegranate is one of the oldest fruits in cultivation and its rind has been used as a dye by carpet makers for millennia. From Ancient Iran and Persia, the pomegranate skins and flowers were used to dye wool and silk, mostly in carpet production and other textiles. The tree bark as well as the fruit contain high levels of tannins and were used for curing leather for centuries in Morroco. The leaves can produce an ink when soaked in vinegar which I’d love to try at some point!
Pomegranate is high in tannin so it dyes cotton and other plant fibers particularly well but it can also be used to dye wool and silk. I love the colors you can get from pomegranate - beautiful golds, beiges and browns. When you post mordant in iron, I’ve gotten mossy greens to silver/grey!
Thank you Pomegranate for your amazing colors and I wish you were local so I can forage you.
Linen Shorts and Corduroy hat dyed with Pomegranate
Pomegranate and Cochineal
Left - Logwood
Right- Pomegranate
