Zoaphite
Zoaphite
According to the seventeenth-century traveler Jan Struys, a zoaphite was a species of cucumber that fed on neighboring plants. Its fruit had the form of a lamb, with the head, feet, and tail of that animal distinctly apparent, and it is thus called, in the language of the country, Canaret, or Conarer, signifying a lamb. Struys described this plant in his book Drie aanmerkelijke en seer rampspoedige (1676), translated as The Voyages and Travels of Jan Struys (1684).
Its skin was covered with a white down. The ancient Tartars thought a great deal of it and most of them kept it carefully in their houses, where Jan Struys says he saw it several times.
It grew on a stalk about three feet in height, to which it was attached by a sort of tendril. On this tendril it could move about and turn and bend toward the herbs on which it fed, and without which it soon dried up and withered. Wolves loved it, devouring it with avidity, because, reportedly, it tasted like the flesh of a lamb. The author added that he had been assured that it had bones, flesh, and blood, thus being known in its native country as zoaphite, or animal plant.