Grouping | Plant |
---|---|
Folklore | Myth based on fact |
First attested | 11th century |
Other name(s) | Scythian Lamb, Borometz, Barometz, Borametz |
Region | Central Asia |
Habitat | Forests |
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Latin: Agnus scythicus or Planta Tartarica Barometz [1] ) is a legendary zoophyte of Central Asia, once believed to grow sheep as its fruit. It was believed 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 legend is the cotton plant, which was unknown in Northern Europe before the Norman conquest of Sicily.
Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica named it as the Boramez. [2]
In Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopædia , Agnus scythicus was described as a kind of zoophyte, said to grow in Tartary, resembling the figure and structure of a lamb. It was also called Agnus Vegetabilis, Agnus Tartaricus and bore the reported endonyms of Borometz, Borametz and Boranetz. [3]
In his book, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (1887), Henry Lee describes the legendary lamb as believed to be both a true animal and a living plant. However, he states that some writers believed the lamb to be the fruit of a plant, sprouting forward from melon-like seeds. Others, however, believed the lamb to be a living member of the plant that, once separated from it, would perish. The vegetable lamb was believed to have blood, bones, and flesh like that of a normal lamb. It was connected to the earth by a stem, similar to an umbilical cord, that propped the lamb up above ground. The cord could flex downward, allowing the lamb to feed on the grass and plants surrounding it. Once the plants within reach were eaten, the lamb died. It could be eaten, once dead, and its blood supposedly tasted sweet like honey. Its wool was said to be used by the native people of its homeland to make head coverings and other articles of clothing. The only carnivorous animals attracted to the lamb plant (other than humans) were wolves. [4]
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of trees in India "the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree-wool." [5]
There is mention of a similar plant-animal in Jewish folklore as early as AD 436. This creature, called the Yeduah (ידוע, ידעוני, or אַדְנֵי הַשָׂדֵה ), was like a lamb in form and sprouted from the earth connected to a stem. Those who went hunting the Yeduah could only harvest the creature by severing it from its stem with arrows or darts. Once the animal was severed, it died and its bones could be used in divination and prophetic ceremonies. [6]
An alternative version of the legend tells of the "jeduah", a human-shaped plant-animal connected to the earth from a stem attached to its navel. The jeduah was believed to be aggressive, though, grabbing and killing any creature that wandered too close. Like the Barometz, it too died once severed from its stem. [7]
The Minorite Friar Odoric of Pordenone, upon recalling first hearing of the vegetable lamb, told of trees on the shore of the Irish Sea with gourd-like fruits that fell into the water and became birds called Bernacles. [8] He is referring to the legendary plant-animal known as the barnacle tree, which was believed to drop its ripened fruit into the sea near the Orkney Islands. The ripened fruit would then release "barnacle geese" that would live in the water, growing to mature geese. The alleged existence of this fellow plant-animal was accepted as an explanation for migrating geese from the North. [9]
In his work The Shui-yang or Watersheep and The Agnus Scythicus or Vegetable Lamb (1892), Gustav Schlegel points to Chinese legends of the "watersheep" as inspiration for the legend of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Much like the vegetable lamb, the watersheep was believed to be both plant and animal, and tales of its existence placed it near Persia. It was connected to the ground by a stem and, if the stem were severed, it would die. The animal was protected from aggressors by an enclosure built around it and by armored men yelling and beating drums. Its wool was also said to be used for fine clothing and headdresses. [10] (In turn, the origin of watersheep is an explanation for sea silk.)
Earlier versions of the legend tell of the lamb as a fruit, springing from a melon or gourd-like seed, perfectly formed as if born naturally. As time passed, this idea was replaced with the notion that the creature was indeed both a living animal and a living plant. Schlegel, in his work on the various legends of the vegetable lamb, recounts the lamb being born without its horns, but with two puffs of white, curly hair instead. [10]
The 14th century book The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is credited with bringing the legend to public attention in Europe. [11] It describes a strange gourd-like fruit grown in Tartary. Once ripe, the fruit was cut open, revealing what looked like a lamb in flesh and blood but lacking wool. The fruit and the lamb could then be eaten. [6]
Friar Odoric of Friuli, much like Mandeville, travelled extensively and claimed to have heard of gourds in Persia that, when ripe, opened to contain lamb-like beasts. [8]
In the Renaissance, the Lamb of Tartary was a frequent object of philosophical and botanical debate. It became an important heuristic to discuss the natural order of things and the Aristotelian scale of beings. [12] The mid-16th century, Sigismund von Herberstein, who in 1517 and 1526 was the ambassador to the Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V, presented a much more detailed account of the Barometz in his "Notes on Russia." He claimed to have heard from too many credible sources to doubt the lamb's existence, and gave the location of the creature as being near the Caspian Sea, between the Jaick (Ural) and Volga rivers. The creature grown from the melon-like seeds described was said to grow to 2.5 ft (0.76 m), resembling a lamb in most ways except a few. It was said to have blood, but not true flesh, as it more closely resembled that of a crab. Unlike a normal lamb, its hooves were said to be made of parted hair. It was the favourite food of wolves and other animals. [13]
In 1698 Sir Hans Sloane claimed a Chinese tree fern, Cibotium barometz , was the origin of the myth. Sloane found the specimen in a Chinese cabinet of curiosities he acquired. 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. [14] [15]
The German scholar and physician Engelbert Kaempfer accompanied an embassy to Persia in 1683 with the intention of locating the lamb. After speaking with native inhabitants and finding no physical evidence of the lamb-plant, Kaempfer concluded it to be nothing but legend. [16] However, he observed the custom of removing an unborn lamb from its mother's womb in order to harvest the soft wool and believed the practice to be a possible source of the legend. [17] He speculated further that museum specimens of the fetal wool could be mistaken for a vegetable substance. [18]
In Erasmus Darwin's work The Botanic Garden (1781), he writes of the Borametz:
E'en round the Pole the flames of love aspire,
And icy bosoms feel the secret fire,
Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle borametz, thy golden hair
Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime;
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
And seems to bleat – a vegetable lamb [19]
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas writes of the vegetable lamb in his poem La Semaine (1587). In the poem, Adam wanders the Garden of Eden and is amazed by the peculiarity of the creature. Joshua Sylvester translates: [20]
But with true beasts, fast in the ground still sticking
Feeding on grass, and th' airy moisture licking,
Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred
Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed;
Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes,
Of new-yeaned lambs have full the form and guise,
And should be very lambs, save that for foot
Within the ground they fix a living root
Which at their navel grows, and dies that day
That they have browzed the neighboring grass away.
Oh! Wondrous nature of God only good,
The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood.
The nimble plant can turn it to and fro,
The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe,
The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit,
The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute:
The plant with plants his hungry paunch doth feede,
Th' admired beast is sowen a slender seed.
In his work Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata (1791), De la Croix writes of the vegetable lamb (translated):
For in his path he sees a monstrous birth,
The Borametz arises from the earth
Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit,
…It is an animal that sleeps by day
And wakes at night, though rooted in the ground,
To feed on grass within its reach around. [21]
The amphisbaena is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end. The name of the creature is alternatively written amphisbaina, amphisbene, amphisboena, amphisbona, amphista, amfivena, amphivena, or anphivena, and is also known as the "Mother of Ants". Its name comes from the Greek words amphis, meaning "both ways", and bainein, meaning "to go".
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering.
Lamb and mutton, collectively sheep meat is one of the most common meats around the world, taken from the domestic sheep, Ovis aries, and generally divided into lamb, from sheep in their first year, hogget, from sheep in their second, and mutton, from older sheep. Generally, "hogget" and "sheep meat" are not used by consumers outside Norway, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, and Australia. Hogget has become more common in England, particularly in the North often in association with rare breed and organic farming.
Benincasa hispida, the wax gourd, also called ash gourd, white gourd, winter gourd, winter melon, tallow gourd, ash pumpkin, Chinese preserving melon, is a vine grown for its very large fruit, eaten as a vegetable when mature. It is the only member of the genus Benincasa.
Calabash, also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh.
Mulesing is the removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech (buttocks) of a sheep to prevent the parasitic infection flystrike (myiasis). The wool around the buttocks can retain feces and urine, which attracts flies. The scar tissue that grows over the wound does not grow wool, so is less likely to attract the flies that cause flystrike. Mulesing is a common practice in Australia for this purpose, particularly on highly wrinkled Merino sheep. Mulesing is considered by some to be a skilled surgical task. Mulesing can only affect flystrike on the area cut out and has no effect on flystrike on any other part of the animal's body.
Chayote or Sicyos edulis, also known as christophine, mirliton and choko, is an edible plant belonging to the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae. This fruit was first cultivated in Mesoamerica between southern Mexico and Honduras, with the most genetic diversity available in both Mexico and Guatemala. It is one of several foods introduced to the Old World during the Columbian Exchange. At that time, the plant spread to other parts of the Americas, ultimately causing it to be integrated into the cuisine of many Latin American nations.
Coccinia grandis, the ivy gourd, also known as scarlet gourd, is a tropical vine. It grows primarily in tropical climates and is commonly found in the Indian states where it forms a part of the local cuisine. Coccinia grandis is cooked as a vegetable dish.
A zoophyte (animal-plant) is an obsolete term for an organism thought to be intermediate between animals and plants, or an animal with plant-like attributes or appearance. In the 19th century they were reclassified as Radiata which included various taxa, a term superseded by Coelenterata referring more narrowly to the animal phyla Cnidaria, sponges, and Ctenophora.
The idea that there are specific marine counterparts to land creatures, inherited from the writers on natural history in Antiquity, was firmly believed in Islam and in Medieval Europe. It is exemplified by the creatures represented in the medieval animal encyclopedias called bestiaries, and in the parallels drawn in the moralising attributes attached to each. "The creation was a mathematical diagram drawn in parallel lines," T. H. White said a propos the bestiary he translated. "Things did not only have a moral they often had physical counterparts in other strata. There was a horse in the land and a sea-horse in the sea. For that matter there was probably a Pegasus in heaven". The idea of perfect analogies in the fauna of land and sea was considered part of the perfect symmetry of the Creator's plan, offered as the "book of nature" to mankind, for which a text could be found in Job:
But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.
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