Quote:The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Latin: Agnus scythicus or Planta Tartarica Barometz) is a legendary zoophyte of Central Asia, once believed to grow sheep as its fruit.[2] The sheep were connected to the plant by an umbilical cord and grazed the land around the plant. When all accessible foliage was gone, both the plant and sheep died.

Underlying the myth is a real plant, Cibotium barometz, a fern of the genus Cibotium. It was known under various other names including the Scythian lamb, the borometz, barometz and borametz, the latter three being different spellings of the local word for lamb.[3] The "lamb" is produced by removing the leaves from a short length of the fern's woolly rhizome. When the rhizome is inverted, it fancifully resembles a woolly lamb with the legs being formed by the severed petiole bases.

Quote:In the Land of Cathay towards the high Indes;
There grows there a manner of fruit; and when they are ripe men cut them off, and men find within a little beast, in flesh, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and beast and that is a great marvel. Of that fruit I have eaten, all thought it were marvellous, but that I know well, that God is marvellous in his works.