Borametz

[page 7] The Tartarian, or Scythian lamb, or borametz, is a plant, of which many miraculous tales are told. Travellers say that it exactly resembles a lamb, and that its pulp is similar to the flesh of lamb; and that it contains blood, &c.; but these accounts require confirmation. [...] [page 8, footnote †] [The plants] appear to be originally the roots or stalks of certain vegetables, probably of the capillary kind, covered with a woolly moss, which, naturally naturally bearing resemblance to the figure of a lamb, have been helped out and brought nearer to it by art, and the addition of new parts. Sir Hans Sloane, and Breynius [Jacob Breyne], give us the figures and descriptions of such borametzes in their collections.

However, one night when I was hard at work in one of the powder mills outside the fortress, 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.