Maltese Cross flower (3)

I distinctly remember being shown, as an eight or nine year old in the 1950s, a Maltese Cross plant in seed in the late summer going into autumn.

This would have been during the period around September 8 which as we all know is an important date on the Maltese calendar; and when the public was allowed to enter Fort St Angelo, then still an active naval base.

Some of the seed pods looked exactly like the Maltese Cross, and although most of the pods had only six points not eight, if we looked hard enough we always found a few which had the exact shape of the Maltese Cross. If we couldn't, dad probably stuck a couple together and fooled us into thinking we had found a perfect one.

He used to tell us there was a legend that the plant came from the blood of the knights who died defending St Angelo - which, as young children, we found not hard to believe.

I never saw the actual flower so I cannot say for sure if the plant in my memory is indeed the Lychnis Chalcedonica.

Can anyone else remember these seed pods and confirm whether they belong to the Maltese Cross flower?

I found plenty of references to it on the web such as:

http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=LYCH3&photoID=lych3_003_avp.jpg

But I couldn't find a picture of its seed pod.

Strange that it should grow in Mediterranean Malta seeing where its habitat in the US is!