Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

A legendary plant of central Asia, believed in medieval times to grow sheep as its fruit. The "fruit" was in fact cotton, but since European travelers were not familiar with the fabric, they reasoned that the material was wool. And since wool came from sheep, the plant must therefore grow sheep. They believed that the puffs of cotton were tiny sheep attached to the plant by an umbilical cord, long enough for the sheep to graze the land around the plant. When the grass and all the plants were gone, the sheep ran off and the plant died, or both the plant and the sheep died.

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