barometz

• baromez
• borametz

Wikispecies

Possibly a corruption of Russian баране́ц (baranéc), from бара́н (barán, “ram”), used to describe a species of club moss.

barometz (plural barometzes)

1. A purported zoophyte, half-animal and half-plant, said to grow in the form of a sheep.
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, III.28:

     Much wonder is made of the borametz, that strange plant-animal or vegetable lamb of Tartary, which wolves delight to feed on, which hath the shape of a lamb, affordeth a bloody juice upon breaking, and liveth while the plants be consumed about it.

   • 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, Part 1:

     Cradled in ſnow and fann'd by gentle air / Shines, gentle Barometz! thy golden hair; / Rooted in earth each cloven hood deſcends, / And round and round her flexile neck ſhe bends […].

   • 1999, Mike Mitchell, translating HJC von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, V.22, Dedalus 2016, p. 426:

     I was captured along with some others by a band of Tartars and carried off so deep into their territory that I not only saw borametz, the legendary sheep-shaped melon, growing, I ate it.

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) The woolly fern, Cibotium barometz, whose inverted roots are thought to be the basis for the legend.

• Scythian lamb
• Vegetable Lamb of Tartary