The Cambodian government has urged people to stop picking ‘penis plants.’
The country’s environment ministry is taking action to prevent people from picking the phallic-shaped plants in order to ensure the survival of the Nepenthes genus.
Sharing images taken from a viral video of three women picking and posing with the plants, the ministry wrote in a Facebook post: “What they are doing is wrong and please don’t do it again in the future.
“Thank you for loving natural resources, but don’t harvest them so they go to waste.”
It is less than a year since the Cambodian government issued a previous request for people not to pick the endangered plants after a “small number of tourists” were caught doing so.
A study published last year in the Cambodian Journal of Natural History warned that the plants’ natural habitats in the country have been “severely reduced” – both in private lands due to agricultural expansion and protected areas for the tourism industry.
