No Sanskrit name is known for the quince, whence it may be inferred that its area did not extend towards the centre of Asia. Neither is there any Hebrew name, though the species is wild upon Mount Taurus.[1174] The Persian name is haivah,[1175] but I do not know whether it is as old as Zend. The same name, aiva, exists in Russian for the cultivated quince, while the name of the wild plant is armud, from the Armenian armuda.[1176] The Greeks grafted upon a common variety, strution, a superior kind, which came from Cydon, in Crete, whence κυδωνιον, translated by the Latin malum cotoneum, by cydonia, and all the European names, such as codogno in Italian, coudougner, and later coing in French, quitte in German, etc. There are Polish, pigwa, Slav, tunja,[1177] and Albanian (Pelasgian?), ftua,[1178] names which differ entirely from the others. This variety of names points to an ancient knowledge of the species to the west of its original country, and the Albanian name may even indicate an existence prior to the Hellenes.
Its antiquity in Greece may also be gathered from the superstition, mentioned by Pliny and Plutarch, that the fruit of the quince was a preservation from evil influences, and from its entrance into the marriage rites prescribed by Solon. Some authors go so far as to maintain that the apple disputed by Hera, Aphrodite, and Athene was a quince. Those who are interested in such questions will find details in Comes’s paper on the plants represented in the frescoes at Pompeii.[1179] The quince tree is figured twice in these, which is not surprising, as the tree was known in Cato’s time.[1180]
It seems to me probable that it was naturalized in the east of Europe before the epoch of the Trojan war. The quince is a fruit which has been little modified by cultivation; it is as harsh and acid when fresh as in the time of the ancient Greeks.
Pomegranate—Punica granatum, Linnæus.
The pomegranate grows wild in stony ground in Persia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan.[1181] Burnes saw groves of it in Mazanderan, to the south of the Caspian Sea.[1182] It appears equally wild to the south of the Caucasus.[1183] Westwards, that is to say, in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in the Mediterranean basin generally, in the north of Africa and in Madeira, the species appears rather to have become naturalized from cultivation, and by the dispersal of the seeds by birds. Many floras of the south of Europe speak of it as a “subspontaneous” or naturalized species. Desfontaines, in his Atlantic Flora, gives it as wild in Algeria, but subsequent authors think[1184] rather it is naturalized.[1185] I doubt its being wild in Beluchistan, where the traveller Stocks found it, for Anglo-Indian botanists do not allow it to be indigenous east of the Indus, and I note the absence of the species in the collections from Lebanon and Syria which Boissier is always careful to quote.
In China the pomegranate exists only as a cultivated plant. It was introduced from Samarkhand by Chang-Kien, a century and a half before the Christian era.[1186]
The naturalization in the Mediterranean basin is so general that it may be termed an extension of the original area. It probably dates from a very remote period, for the cultivation of the species dates from a very early epoch in Western Asia.
Let us see whether historical and philological data can give us any information on this head.
I note the existence of a Sanskrit name, darimba, whence several modern Indian names are derived.[1187] Hence we may conclude that the species had long been known in the regions traversed by the Aryans in their route towards India. The pomegranate is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, under the name of rimmon,[1188] whence the Arabic rumman or rûman. It was one of the fruit trees of the promised land, and the Hebrews had learnt to appreciate it in Egyptian gardens. Many localities in Palestine took their name from this shrub, but the Scriptures only mention it as a cultivated species. The flower and the fruit figured in the religious rites of the Phœnicians, and the goddess Aphrodite had herself planted it in the isle of Cyprus,[1189] which implies that it was not indigenous there. The Greeks were acquainted with the species in the time of Homer. It is twice mentioned in the Odyssey as a tree in the gardens of Phæacia and Phrygia. They called it roia or roa, which philologists believe to be derived from the Syrian and Hebrew name,[1190] and also sidai,[1191] which seems to be Pelasgic, for the modern Albanian name is sige.[1192] There is nothing to show that the species was wild in Greece, where Fraas and Heldreich affirm that it is now only naturalized.[1193]
The pomegranate enters into the myths and religious ceremonies of the ancient Romans.[1194] Cato speaks of its properties as a vermifuge. According to Pliny,[1195] the best pomegranates came from Carthage, hence the name Malum punicum; but it should not be supposed, as it has been assumed, that the species came originally from Northern Africa. Very probably the Phœnicians had introduced it at Carthage long before the Romans had anything to do with this town, and it was doubtless cultivated as in Egypt.