Note 2 — XXVIII THE GREATER SILA

As a matter of fact, the mushroom-stone is a well-known commodity, being still collected and eaten, for example, at Santo Stefano in Aspramente. Older travellers tell us that it used to be exported to Naples and kept in the cellars of the best houses for the enjoyment of its fruit—sometimes in lumps measuring two feet in diameter which, being soaked in water, produced these edible fungi. A stone yielding food—a miracle! It is a porous tufa adapted, presumably, for sheltering and fecundating vegetable spores. A little pamphlet by Professor A. Trotter (“Flora Montana della Calabria”) gives some idea of the local plants and contains a useful bibliography. A curious feature is the relative abundance of boreal and Balkan-Oriental forms; another, the rapid spread of Genista anglica, which is probably an importation.