Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

deinonychus commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Latin: Agnus scythicus or Planta Tartarica Barometz) is a legendary zoophyte of central Asia, believed to grow sheep as its fruit. The sheep were connected to the plant by an umbilical cord and grazed the land around the plant. When all the plants were gone, both the plant and sheep died. (Wikipedia)

January 21, 2012

yarb commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

See comments on barometz.

January 21, 2012

deinonychus commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

Ah, these misleading capital letters. I did find it strange that Barometz didn't have all the comments it deserved, but there they are at barometz.

January 21, 2012

yarb commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

It's because the comment-engine of Wordnik comes from what was once a separate site, called Wordie, and devoted more to the social side of words than the technical side. Wordie was quite rudimentary (in the best possible way) and didn't distinguish upper from lower case. So many words which should have an upper case element are replete with old comments on their lower case form.

January 21, 2012

yarb commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

For what it's worth, I still think there should be a redirect to the correctly-cased version of a word, with disambiguation for genuine discrepancies.

January 21, 2012

rolig commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

Which is the correctly cased form, yarb? I would guess the lowercase barometz, since this is the name of a type of (mythical) entity (like unicorn), not a personal name (like Pegasus).

January 21, 2012