Pomegranate dormancy

[bopcrane]

How do you all tell that your poms are dormant? Most of the leaves have dropped from all of my poms, but I don't know if there's a trick to tell if they're still sort of active or not like the latex that flows from figs' bark.
For example, my greenhouse stays ~ >30 degrees so I'd imagine though they have lost their leaves the poms in there are probably more active at this point than the poms facing outside temperatures here.

Do most simply wait until it's been cold for long enough that they must be dormant, or is this not really much of an issue?

[greenfig]

My outside temp stays >40 so your greenhouse is definitely colder and my poms get dormant for about 1 month in Jan-Feb.
Right now, they all look different. I have the ones that lost all the leaves already (Sin Pepe), covered in yellow (Desetnyi, Sirenevyi), and still green (Angel Red, Parfianka, Eversweet). Those are the larger trees. All the rooted cuttings are confused at this point and some are actively growing or very green.

I believe the tree is dormant when the leaves are all fallen and the water consumption has almost stopped. It is easy to see if a plant is potted, not sure how to determine the state for the inground trees. It also would probably depend on the climate. Since I have no frost, the trees often grow roots during the dormant period and roots+leaves during the active growth.

[JoshHolbrook]

If the leaves have senesced, they're dormant!

[Eykca]

Now that is a 25 cent word!

PS, my Eversweet and Sirenvyi have been fighting the good fight as well, all my others (parf, wond, e.wond, desert, sharp.v, angel r., ambros) have dropped everything.

[pogrmman]

It’s been so warm this winter that not only did my pomegranates not shed the majority of their leaves until like mid-December, and one of my potted ones is budding out already.

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This winter and fall has been hard on my plants. We’ve been in a drought since July, and September smashed the record for hottest ever — over 8° above average with an average high of 99.8° (only one day had a high less than 96°)! Since then, even though we haven’t been colder than 29° and have had only 4 freezes at my house, our first freeze was the 5rd earliest ever (over 5 weeks early!) and only a week or so after our last 90° day. This "winter", we haven’t had much cold and it’s mostly been around 70° in the day. Many of my plants are confused and are starting to push out new growth: which is inevitably gonna be zapped by a freeze in February. Some of the deciduous trees haven’t lost all their leaves yet.

I’m hoping the ground stays cool enough to keep my big pomegranate from budding out until at least mid/late February, but who knows?