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.

[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.

[4] The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of trees in India "the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep.

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

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.

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.