Garnet Sash Pomegranate falsely sold as Parfianka

General Fruit Growing
#8

These are from Richard Ashton’s pomegranate book. Elf has many different descriptions. So much misinformation out there hard to know what is going on. The person I got my Garnet Sash cuttings from described his fruit more in line with the last two descriptions of Elf below.

• “Parfianka” – Sold as Garnet Sash by a large west coast
nursery. This great red fruit with soft seeds has a complex
sweet-tart taste. Excellent. Plant is vigorous with heavy
production.

• “Elf” – Red skinned fruit with dark- red sweet-tart arils on a
medium/small size plant hence the name “Elf”. Very good for
cooking

DPUN 045 Elf – Also DPUN 88 – Dwarf. Fruit greenish-yellow with
orange blush, shape blocky, size small to medium. Arils large, translucent
pink. Juice light pink, slightly tart and watery. Named by John Lovell.
Description by Dr. John Lovell, Fruit Gardener, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1st

Elf – Dwarf with yellowish-green fruit with orange blush. Arils large,
translucent pink. Juice light pink. Heavy bearing. Another dwarf that is a
showy plant but bares large fruit. Slow growing.

#9

I checked with Harvey Correia, and he too said Garnet Sash is Elf. He has Gissarskii Rosovyi that he collected from Wolfskill, and says that it’s excellent.

#10

One of several persons who tried to profit from the pomegranate publication bandwagon.

#11

Who lives a few dozen miles from Wolfskill. In different climates your mileage will likely vary.

#12

evidently the topic(of ‘false’ accusation) has not been fully settled. Perhaps @Tylt33 could contact Spellman(yet again) for this query?

#13

Yes it has. Check the accession numbers at ARS.

#14

Two things I have learned
1 Garnet Sash is not Parfianka
2 Dave Wilson should not have given them their own new names which has created much of this confusion

2 Likes
#15

As a customer of Dave Wilson at the time I can assure you that Parfianka NEVER was given a new name.

Also note that Ed Laivo (a colleague of mine at the time) has apologized profusely for creating the confusion – he completely underestimated the knowledge of CRFG members.

#16

Good work! Now I have confidence that some folks here can solve these inconsistencies on their own :smile: :smile:

This also tells me that somewhere in the last decade DWN started using a different accession for Garnet Sash.

#17

I dunno if that was intended as some sort of slight towards me, I was just trying to get to the bottom of things, and I think I did so without needing to check the accession numbers?

#18

NOT AT ALL. :smile:

I was praising you.

#19

So the Parfianka sold by EL is actually Garnet Sash?

#20

either that or parfianka was being sold as parfyanka, or vice-versa.
if the two are actually different cultivars.

#21

You’ll need to contact them for details. I did file a complaint with them about their web page for Parfianka but the current owners might ignore it.

@jujubemulberry, the amount of speculation you engage in is amusing :slightly_smiling:.
I stood there with Jeff Moersfelder when he explained that they had two clonal submissions of the plant and thus two accessions. The difference between parfianka and parfyanka were due to Israeli and Russian spellings – yet at the same time the two submissions differed in hardiness at Wolfskill. Over time it was difficult to tell the difference between the fruits. You’ll need to read “Pomegranate Trails” to fill in a few details.

#22

probably no need to research further, as parfyanka is (per grin) a separate and wild cultivar obtained from the balkan region of turkmenistan, and parfianka is a cultivated one of unspecified provenance but also from turkmenistan. They are different cultivars, and reportedly both sourced from turkmenistan’s agricultural center which deemed them non-identical. If you check the bottom section of each’s accession page, you’d see them as separate entities, and both hailing from the same source.
there’s another discussion about it in another fruit growing site which corroborates that, and which mentions of some specialist from turkmenistan categorically saying they are not the same. I will post it once i find it.

which means that anyone with a parfianka could well have a parfyanka, or vice-versa. The ridiculously similar nomenclature sure doesn’t help

#23

:evergreen_tree:

#24

another unsettled dispute-- malumgranate is argued to be the correct name, and not pomegranate.

#25

Sorry, but your explanation does not make sense. In the Turkmenistan agricultural center where Dr. Levin worked in Soviet times, they used Russian, and in Russian there is no difference in spelling — it’s Парфянка either way. If your explanation is correct, it means that the same researcher (or group of researchers) called two different varieties the same name. The difference in spelling is due to the fact that transliteration from Cyrillic alphabet to Latin alphabet is not unique, and different transliterations were used for accessions obtained from different sources.

#26

i don’t speak russian, but i understand what you’re trying to say.[quote=“Stan, post:25, topic:5740”]
If your explanation is correct, it means that the same researcher (or group of researchers) called two different varieties the same name.
[/quote]

it actually does not matter if am correct, what matter’s is if i am wrong, then parfyanka must be the same cultivar as parfianka. Also, was merely going by what have read a long time ago(and yes it was-- i think, the same Dr levin), stating that they were different.
GRIN says they are different, with parfyanka having PUN 124 and obtained from the wilderness in balkan region, while parfianka is PUN 15 which is reported as domesticated variety. GRIN and its PUN’s are supposedly the ultimate reference in plant identification.

will just have to GRIN and bear it, and pardon the PUN :grinning:

kidding aside, this thread was initiated to sound the alarm about something being sold falsely as something else. The trouble is-- that something else seems to have(in itself) dubious identities.

#27

@Richard @ross George from Edible Landscaping here. Thanks for pointing this out, we were going on info we had been given, the Garnet Sash has been taken out of our description for Parfianka. Our sources and our own propagation are originally from the repository and are true Parfianka.