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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ken Dorney, post: 2519746, member: 76086&quot;]As I mentioned it will be impossible for us to figure out what it is and what the importance was.&nbsp; Like I said, likely food or medicine.&nbsp; I found this passage from 1907 (one can easily google it), a book on travel to Sicily:</p><p><br /></p><p>Thistles in Sicily.&nbsp; There is a beautiful silver thistle found in Syracuse etc.&nbsp; Goethe mentions an estate quite overrun with large thistles.&nbsp; While seriously &quot;meditating an agricultural campaign against them, we saw two Sicilian noblemen standing before a patch of these thistles, and with their pocket-knives cutting off the tops of the tall shoots.&nbsp; Then holding their prickly booty by the tips of their fingers, they peeled off the rind, and devoured the inner part with great satisfaction.&nbsp; In this way they occupied themselves a considerable time, while we were refreshing ourselves with wine (this time it was unmixed) and bread.&nbsp; The vetturino prepared for us some of this marrow of thistle stalks, and assured us that it was wholesome, cooling food; it suited out taste, however, as little of the raw cabbage at Segeste.&quot;&nbsp; One wonders if they were prickly-pears, which give &quot;figs of thistles&quot;, to use the biblical phrase.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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