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
Medieval Latin thus varied between different European countries. These orthographical differences were often due to changes in pronunciation or, as in the previous example, morphology, which authors reflected in their writing. By the 16th century, Erasmus complained that speakers from different countries were unable to understand each other's form of Latin. The gradual changes in Latin did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Petrarch, writing in the 14th century, complained about this linguistic "decline", which helped fuel his general dissatisfaction with his own era. The corpus of medieval Latin literature encompasses a wide range of texts, including such diverse works as sermons,