Record #13
Barometz
A legendary lamb-plant hybrid rooted to the earth like a living botanical marvel.
Original Text
The vegetable Lamb of Tartary, also named Barometz and Lycopodium barometz and Chinese lycopodium, is a plant whose shape is that of a lamb bearing a golden fleece. It stands on four or five root stalks. Sir Thomas Browne gives this description of it in his PseudodoxiaEpidemica (I646):
Much wonder is made of the Boramez, that strange plantanimal or vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which Wolves delight to feed on, which hath the shape of a Lamb, affordeth a bloody juyce upon breaking, and liveth while the plants be consumed about it.
Other monsters are made up by combining various kinds of animals; the Barometz is a union of animal and vegetable kingdoms.
This brings to mind the mandrake, which cries out like a man when it is ripped from the earth; and in one of the circles of the Inferno, the sad forest of the suicides, from whose torn limbs blood and words drip at the same time; and that tree dreamed by Chesterton, which devoured the birds nesting in its branches, and when spring came put out feathers instead of leaves.
Much wonder is made of the Boramez, that strange plantanimal or vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which Wolves delight to feed on, which hath the shape of a Lamb, affordeth a bloody juyce upon breaking, and liveth while the plants be consumed about it.
Other monsters are made up by combining various kinds of animals; the Barometz is a union of animal and vegetable kingdoms.
This brings to mind the mandrake, which cries out like a man when it is ripped from the earth; and in one of the circles of the Inferno, the sad forest of the suicides, from whose torn limbs blood and words drip at the same time; and that tree dreamed by Chesterton, which devoured the birds nesting in its branches, and when spring came put out feathers instead of leaves.