Pomegranates

I've come to the conclusion that my fruiting pomegranate bush growing beside the garage is not a "Wonderful" pomegranate. This shouldn't surprise me, and it doesn't--unfortunately. The pomegranates were some of the first plants I bought five years ago when we moved to the new house. At the time, the guy who sold them to me at the nursery insisted I had to buy two of them, since pomegranates were either male or female. Ahem. I've since found out otherwise. And one of the two pomegranates I bought--supposedly of the "Wonderful" cultivar--is nothing of the sort, since it produced double-bloomed flowers at an early age. In short, it is a non-fruiting variety, ornamental only. Grr. That leaves the other one. It's produced an increasing number of pomegranates over the past three seasons, but they'd always split or apparently go bad before ripening. This filled me with no end of consternation, since for some reason I still clung to the notion that it was the widely-grown commercial cultivar "Wonderful." Until yesterday. With suspicion growing, I picked one small fruit that seemed mature (ie it had a higher-pitched "thump" when I tapped it) and cut it open. All the seedy arils--the juicy, fruit part you eat--were still clear/whitish, and not the rosy pink of a ripe "Wonderful." Then I popped a few in my mouth. Quite tart, but definitely sweet and very juicy. That settled it--instead of "Wonderful," I had some random, unnamed white-fruited variety.

I have no idea if the guy who sold me them was a liar or a moron. I've had so much trouble in recent years with people selling me specific cultivars of fruiting plants that turn out to be nothing of the sort. They're supposed to be the experts, so why am I continually having to call them on it?

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