Richard Mabey and Robbin Moran discuss the fabled Lamb of Tartary, an animal-plant that was once believed to grow out of the ground like an artichoke. Moran also describes the fern thought to be the origin of this myth, Cibotium barometz.
See the digital exhibition, Poetic Botany: Art and Science of the Eighteenth-Century Vegetable World at www.nybg.org/poetic-botany/
