You are taking the Auto-Train from Sanford to Lorton Virginia. You are heading east on State Road 46, and just coming down from the railroad overpass. There are a whole lot of orange construction barrels and then a sign saying. "Use Pomegranite, not Persimmon".
Say what? Pomegranite? Who names a street, Pomegranite? If you had gone just a little further, you would have seen a street sign saying Mangoustine.
When Henry Sanford, the founder of our fair town, laid it out in the late Nineteenth Century, he did a pretty good job when he started out on the east side. Names like Willow, Orange, Locust, Hickory were trees most people were familiar with.
Sanford brought a lot of species from around the world to see what would grow here and be commercially viable. Thus, when he ran out of commonly known trees, he threw in some unspellable and unpronounceable on the west side of town.
That is how Sanford got Pomegranite, Persimmon, Mangoustine, Avocado, Oleander and Jessamine.
It could have been worse. The original name for the county was Mosquito. That was changed for Chamber of Commerce purposes as was Rattlesnake Lake which became Lake Kathryn.
If we were still living in Mosquito County, the Auto-Train riders might have seen signs that read, "Use Culex instead of Anopheles, if you miss that turn, turn right on Aedes Aegypti."
See, Pomegranite isn't so bad after all.
