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Meet Coco de Mer, potency enhancer.

Enough to unleash cravings.

By CHRISTOPHE SEIDLER [Spiegel Online] – The Coco de Mer has long been an object of fascination. Habsburg ruler Rudolf II forked out a king’s ransom for the natural rarity, paying 4,000 guilders for a single nut. By way of comparison, the goldsmith from Prague who was paid to artfully encase it in gold typically brought home only 10 guilders a month.

For centuries, inhabitants of the Seychelles had a thriving trade in the nuts. They were exported to a number of places, including India and China, where they were processed to produce medications and potency enhancers.

In recent years, however, exporting them has become a bit more complicated. In early 2010, when the Berlin-based lawyer Robin Maletz was allowed to bring one back to the German capital, he first had to obtain a special permit from the government. In the end, he lugged the nut on to the plane in his carry-on luggage, as an official gift from the Republic of Seychelles.

These days, the hope in Berlin is that the palm tree merely survives. After all, it is a very special plant. During a visit to the Seychelles in the late 19th century, British Gen. Charles Gordon, the former governor-general of the Sudan, stumbled upon the following notion: He was convinced that the Coco de Mer was undoubtedly the forbidden fruit of the biblical Tree of Knowledge. Given what he believed was the nut’s uncanny resemblance to a woman’s “thighs and belly,” he said that it was the only thing that could have unleashed all the cravings of the flesh. If there was any tree that could incite the curious, the evangelical Christian explained, it would be this one.

Continued at Spiegel Online | More Chronicle & Notices.

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