In honor of Mother’s Day, we have a baby bug:
To give you an idea of size, that’s a nasturtium petal it is standing on.
There’s something unusual about this bug. Can you spot it?
Do you think the change is permanent?
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Two hints this week. First, this is the “package” the seeds come in. Second, I didn’t find these in Arizona.
Sometimes they look like this.
And after you bring them inside, they look like this.
Do you know what the plant that produces these is called?
Heather correctly recognized our aril-covered seeds last week as pomegranate, Punica granatum.
Pomegranates are originally from the Middle East. They grow wonderfully well in Arizona’s heat and alkaline soils.
In fact, some people grow them as landscape plants for their lovely red-orange flowers.
The plants readily produce fruit.
My son started our dwarf pomegranates from the seeds of a fruit. Ours only reach a few feet tall, but some varieties are large shrubs or even small trees up to 20 feet tall.
If you are not familiar with the pomegranate, you eat the fleshy part around the seeds. You can consume the seeds as well, or spit them out.
The fleshy part is called the aril, which is a botanical term for any outgrowth of the attachment point of the seed in the ovary.
In this video, you can see one way to handle separating the seeds from the white pithy material within the fruit.
Do pomegranates grow where you live? What is you favorite way to eat one?
Purdue has more information about pomegranates.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.