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New Year's Day, time to walk off the festive sluggard, so off I went for a wander. Fungus Rock, a piece of celebrity geology in these parts, you see it on postcards and the like. A great lump of limestone just off the western coast of Gozo, famed for the plant which grows atop it. The Maltese Fungus (Cynomorium coccineum) is in fact not a fungus, it's a foul-smelling, phallic shaped parasite. It has no chlorophyll, thus can't manufacture its own food, so it gains its nutrients from the roots of other plants.
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The age-old herbalist myth states that when a plant resembles a body part, it may be used to cure ailments of that same part. Thus, as you might imagine, various plants in the Cynomorium genus have been used in an attempt to aid those suffering from erectile dysfunction, sexually transmitted diseases and the like. The Knights of Malta held the plant in high esteem, using it as a styptic wound dressing and as a cure for dysentery. In 1746, Grand Master Pinto ordered the sides of Fungus Rock to be smoothed to deter locals climbing the rock and stealing the plant. So highly was it valued the Knights would present the plant as a gift to visiting dignitaries and European royalty. Quite what they thought about being handed a malodorous cock-shaped parasitic weed as a present goes sadly unrecorded. Presumably, as the Knights were a bunch of terrifying battle-hardened warriors, the recipients wisely kept their opinions to themselves.