Cynomorium

Cynomorium is a genus of parasitic perennial flowering plants whose only species is Cynomorium coccineum, though one of its subspecies is sometimes treated as a separate species. It has no chlorophyll and cannot make its own food: it lives mostly underground as a rhizome attached to the roots of a host plant, and sends up in spring a fleshy stem topped with a club-shaped, dark-red spike 15 to 30 centimetres long of minute scarlet flowers. It grows in dry, rocky or sandy soils and saline places near the coast, and is rare or local. Its names include Maltese fungus, tarthuth (Bedouin) and suoyang (Chinese). It has been used in European, Arabian and Chinese herbal medicine, and Arabic physicians called it the treasure of drugs. In China it is said to have been brought from Mongolia in the Yuan dynasty, and it is first mentioned in a medical text in 1347. It has also been a famine food and a crimson dye.