Pomegranate late 16th century and into California by Spanish settlers in 1769. Today, it is widely cultivated throughout the Middle East and Caucasus region, north and tropical Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, the drier parts of southeast Asia, and parts of the Mediterranean Basin. It is also cultivated in parts of Arizona and California. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has become more common in the shops and markets of Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The name pomegranate derives from medieval Latin "pōmum" "apple" and "grānātum" "seeded". Possibly stemming from the old French word for the fruit, "pomme-grenade", the pomegranate
Forbidden fruit Paramhansa Yogananda cites an interpretation by his master Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri that the Garden of Eden refers to man's body, with the fruit in the center being that of the sexual organs. In Western Europe, the fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – "mălum", a native Latin noun which means evil (from the adjective "malus"), and "mālum", another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means apple. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as "de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali" : "but