Punica granatum 'Toyosho'

Punica granatum 'Toyosho' answers a question few think to ask of a pomegranate: what if the flower, not the fruit, were the whole point? The blooms are fully double and carnation-like, as much as three inches across, in warm shades of peach, apricot, and soft salmon, with the crimped, tissue-paper texture of an old-fashioned boutonniere. So many petals crowd each flower that pollination becomes nearly impossible, so 'Toyosho' seldom fruits, spending the long summer instead in an unhurried procession of bloom.

The pomegranate is an ancient traveler, carried east from Persia along the trade routes until the shrub reached China and, eventually, Japan, where gardeners came to prize the flowering forms as much as the fruiting ones. There the double-flowered pomegranates, hanazakuro, or flowering pomegranate, became a staple of ornamental gardens and a favorite subject for bonsai, valued for gnarled bark, fine foliage, and generous bloom. 'Toyosho' belongs to that Japanese line of selection, a cultivar bred toward the flower and away from the fruit.

Even stripped of the harvest, 'Toyosho' carries the freight of the species behind the flowers. Punica granatum has been cultivated since antiquity across Persia and the Mediterranean, the many-seeded fruit an emblem of fertility and abundance from Greek myth to Middle Eastern feast, and the name a small lesson in history: granatum, meaning grainy or full of seeds, gave English the word grenade, while Punica recalls Carthage and the Punic peoples through whom Rome first met the fruit. This cultivar keeps the lineage and the romance while trading the crop for a summer of carnation flowers.

In the garden, 'Toyosho' earns a place where the flowers can be met at close range: a sunny mixed border, a foundation planting, a courtyard, or a large patio container, and the compact, glossy-leaved frame takes readily to training as a small multi-stemmed tree, an espalier, or a bonsai. Give full sun for the heaviest bloom, sharp drainage, and a sheltered, warm spot; light shade is tolerated at the cost of a few flowers. Pair the shrub with rosemary, salvias, and other sun-and-drought lovers, and where hard freezes threaten, grow 'Toyosho' in a pot that can shelter under cover for winter.