From this description came the legend of the "vegetable lamb plant" which was said to be a real sheep.

The vegetable lamb was believed to have blood, bones, and flesh like that of a normal lamb.

Denis Diderot wrote an article about the vegetable lamb in the first edition of his Encyclopédie.

Much like the vegetable lamb, the watersheep was believed to be both plant and animal and tales of its existence placed it near Persia.

Korean researchers found the isolation of compounds from the mythical vegetable lamb plant (Cibotium barometz) prevents bone deterioration.

On the other hand, he rebutted the legendary Vegetable Lamb cryptid that found its place in Peter Petreius book.

The fern's woolly rhizome was thought to be the inspiration for the mythical "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary".

Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Mythological animal)

The vegetable lamb appears in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings.

This source says: "Linnaeus [...] had seen a faked vegetable lamb taken from China to Sweden by a traveler."

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas writes of the vegetable lamb in his poem La Semaine (1587).

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.

It was thought to be the mythical Vegetable Lamb of Tartary during the Middle Ages due to the resemblance of its woolly rhizomes to a lamb.

Gustav 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.

One has only to consult Borges's own "Book of Imaginary Beings" to encounter chimeras, phoenixes, basilisks, barometzes (the last a kind of vegetable lamb) and the like.

In his work Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata (1791), Dr. De la Croix writes of the vegetable lamb (translated):

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.

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.

(See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.) This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in many European languages, such as German 'Baumwolle', which translates as "tree wool" ('Baum' means "tree"; 'Wolle' means "wool").

With Easter taking place on April 4, more attention is being brought to this research because of the myth surrounding the vegetable lamb plant, namely that in the Middle Ages, as an explanation for how cotton grows, the C. barometz was believed to bear fruit that produced a lamb.

The Danish doctor Ole Worm had a celebrated collection called the Museum Wormianum (1655) in which he correctly identified a narwhal’s tusk as being from a whale not a unicorn but in which he also believed he possessed a splendid half-plant, half-sheep creature known as “The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary”.

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.

The fern's woolly rhizome was thought to be the inspiration for the mythical "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary".

Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Mythological animal)

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.

It was thought to be the mythical Vegetable Lamb of Tartary during the Middle Ages due to the resemblance of its woolly rhizomes to a lamb.

(See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.) This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in many European languages, such as German 'Baumwolle', which translates as "tree wool" ('Baum' means "tree"; 'Wolle' means "wool").

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.