Reposting old time-lapse art. Enjoy everyone!

An enigmatic botanical cryptid has finally been captured! This creature may look like a sheep, but it is in fact a highly modified seed pod of the Tartary Lamb Plant (Borometz tartaricus). An intrepid team of botanists, anthropologists, and ecologists used documents from the 16th century in European archives to locate the plant’s habitat in Central Asia. The team managed to study the plant in the wild and bring back a complete specimen, shown in the official photo. This species belongs to the Malvales which include Hollyhocks, Cacao, and Baobab. The Tartary Lamb Plant starts as a spreading plant with a rosette of large leaves followed by a single hibiscus-like flower the size of a bicycle tire. Once fertilised, the flower develops into large seed pods with a dense woolly coating. The shocking transformation occurs when limb-like protrusions grow from these seed pods and it morphs into a quadruped resembling a lamb. A long stalk connects the quadruped seedpod is connected to the main plant while it feeds on grass and plants in a radius around the rosette. The lamb-like seed pod ceases movement and dries up when it has eaten all the surrounding grass. The quadruped’s body splits open as it dries to release the seeds inside, which are covered in an exquisite fine wool-like fibre. Indigenous people in Central Asia have closely guarded the secret origin of this special fibre used in their traditional textiles for centuries. In Persia, locals even killed German explorers who came close to observing the Tartary Vegetable Lamb in the 1600’s.   This extraordinary specimen was collected in a remote area of Kazakhstan in the summer of 2022 and is currently being studied by Dr. Katarzyna Podrobka and her colleagues at the esteemed Piltdown Institute of Natural History in the UK. APRIL FOOLS! The Tartary Lamb was a botanical hoax inspired by the real Levant Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum). This cotton species grows in Sub Sharan Africa and Arabia, and its seed coat fibres have been used for textiles for at least 6000 years in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, South Asia, China, and Central Asia. However, Northern Europe was ignorant of cotton cloth until the Renaissance period. During the Medieval times, travellers’ reports of cotton plants in India and Arabia became distorted into the myth of the Tartary Vegetable Lamb. Cotton is a plant that bears a wool-like fibre, so it was only a few jumps of the imagination to entire sheep growing on trees! The Tartary Lamb is similar to my hoax post, and as late as the 17th century European naturalists went on expeditions to locate the beast. The “lamb” in the photo, constructed from the roots and fibres of the Chinese tree fern (Cibotium barometz), belonged to the gardener and collector John Tradescant (1580 – 1638) and is housed at London’s Garden Museum. Remember, use your critical thinking at all times on the internet – not just on April Fools! #AprilFoolsDay #AprilFools #HOAX #fakenews #jokes #mythology #mythicalcreatures #lamb #plants #botany #cryptid #cryptozoology #weirdnature #plantbiology #cotton

Let us have a quick glance into the diverse uses of the cotton plant.

Every part of the cotton plant is used; nothing is just discarded.

wait till they find out about the human custom of gifting flowers to your loved ones

i HAVE to profess my love for african painted dogs

look at this fucking thing. holy shit its so cute. they have such beautiful patterns on them with the orange and black and white, their ears are SO ROUND and SO BIG. i have an enamel pin thats an african painted dog and a plushie of one who i named atlas, i wanna get a keychain of one so so bad. they're such underrated animals and i think more people should love them because they deserve literally everything in the world. if i could have any animal as a friend i would choose african painted dog. they are so friend shaped its insane ive never seen another animal look so cute, little african painted puppies are like looking at pure joy given a dog shaped body. more people need to love this animal and they need to do it NOW

String identified:

A t aca at g

at t cg tg. t t ct. t a c at att t t t ag a ac a t, t a a a G. a a a tat a aca at g a a a ata, aa gt a ca a. t' c at aa a t t ca t ta tg t . c a a aa a a c aca at g. t a a t a at aa ct, tt aca at a g at g a g a . t t aa a t t t

Closest match: Gossypium herbaceum isolate Zhongcao1 chromosome 7 Common name: Levant cotton

Swiss Morning by AirHaake

click for better quality!

are you gonna start climbing, or what? / needletail

vioently takes ur peashooter and covers him in cotton candy

BEHOLD THE PEASHOOTER CAN YOU JUST STRAIGHT UP EAT like you can eat peashooter before but literally nothing is stopping you now

just straight up bite his hair cotton candy man also another excuse to draw these eyebleeding guys

Whimsicott - Esponjosa stravagante

Full print available here!

@panaceaphantastica submitted: Hi I'm sorry for adding my face to the mix but I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this picture my boyfriend took of me excited about a pretty bug I found. Literally seconds before I started asking for the camera so I could take a picture to submit it here! Ur allowed to post this submission btw if me being in it is not against the rules! Took while climbing at the Brazilian Highlands, Itatiaia National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I would love to know what kind of bug is this, there was this one time when I was 6 or 7 that I found (to my horror) three of these in my pants somehow???? They were just sitting there and I spent the day with those pants and only noticed something weird at night. Still feels like a fever dream.

(I think I accidentally deleted the auto tags I'm so sorry I hope this doesn't mess anything up)

Nope, it doesn't mess anything up, I can easily re-add the tags. They're just there so I don't have to type them every single time.

Anyhoo I too would get excited about this little dude! Very colorful. It's a cotton stainer bug, Dysdercus ruficollis. They're a type of plant bug, so definitely harmless to people. Not sure what they were doing in your pants lol. Human taxi?

This thing. Its in my home

I dont know how it got here.

Butterfly pea tea brewed from dried flower petals. Herbal teas and tisanes made from the colorful Clitoria ternatea plant change color based on pH: adding lemon juice will turn the mixture purple, while adding hibiscus leaves will turn it bright red.

☕️ Feed.annna on IG

Why is World Cotton Day Important?

Because cotton is a natural fiber like no other. Here are just some reasons why.

It’s a poverty-alleviating crop in some of the least developed countries in the world, providing sustainable and decent employment to people across the globe.

It biodegrades quickly compared with synthetic alternatives, decreasing the amount of plastics entering our waterways and helping to keep our oceans clean.

It’s the only agricultural commodity that provides both fiber and food.

As a crop that grows in arid climates, it thrives in places no other crop can.