The vegetable lamb of Tartary

One of Sir John Mandeville's sources was Odoric of Pordenone who lived from 1286-1331. He was a Franciscan monk who became a missionary in the East and visited China in 1323-8. Odoric relates a tale of a melon grown in Tartary which, when opened, contained a small lamb. Mandeville tells a similar story about Korea: "There grows a kind of fruit as big as gourds, and when ripe, men open it and find inside an animal of flesh and blood and bone, like a little lamb without wool. And the people of that land eat the animal, and the fruit too. It is a great marvel. Nevertheless I said to them that it did not seem a very great marvel to me, for in my country, I said, there were trees which bore a fruit that became birds that could fly; men call them barnacle geese and there is good meat on them." This is an old legend cited by Giraldus Cambrensis and Vincent of Beauvais which said that the geese grew from the stalked barnacle (lepas anatifera) which has some slight resemblance in shape and markings to a miniature barnacle goose.