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The mythical barnacle tree, believed in the Middle Ages to have barnacles that opened to reveal geese, may have a similar origin to the other legends already mentioned. [ 27 ] Goose barnacles turning into barnacle geese in Sebastian Münster 's 1552 Cosmographia
Pliny the Elder did not discuss the barnacle goose myth. Pliny's Naturalis Historiae is an early encyclopaedia that expands his views on the physical and natural world. While he makes extensive reference to "Geese", e.g. goose fat, he does not mention Barnacle Geese and their origins in his sections on Marine Animals and Birds. [16]
"The goose-tree" from Gerard's Herbal (1597), displaying the belief that goose barnacles produced barnacle geese.. In the days before birds were known to migrate, barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis, were thought to have developed from this crustacean through spontaneous generation, since they were never seen to nest in temperate Europe, [4] hence the English names "goose barnacle" and "barnacle ...
In 1698 Sir Hans Sloane claimed a Chinese tree fern, Cibotium barometz, was the origin of the myth. Sloane found the specimen in a Chinese cabinet of curiosities he acquired. The "lamb" is produced by removing the leaves from a short length of the fern's woolly rhizome. When the rhizome is inverted, it fancifully resembles a woolly lamb, with ...
Barnacle adults are sessile; most are suspension feeders with hard calcareous shells, but the Rhizocephala are specialized parasites of other crustaceans, with reduced bodies. Barnacles have existed since at least the mid-Carboniferous, some 325 million years ago. In folklore, barnacle geese were once held to emerge fully formed from goose ...
In the Middle Ages, it was thought that the goose barnacle gave birth to the barnacle goose, supporting the virgin birth of Jesus. [ 24 ] From the fall of the Roman Empire in 5th century to the East–West Schism in 1054, the influence of Greek science declined, although spontaneous generation generally went unchallenged.
The current population of goose barnacles was once a much larger and sound population of sea fauna from the Tethys Ocean, with Pollicipes polymerus branching off from the population before new species emerged. P. elegans, P. pollicipes, and P. caboverdensis are more closely related to one another than they are to P. polymerus. [9]
The genus name Branta is a Latinised form of Old Norse brandgás, "burnt (black) goose". The specific epithet bernicla is Medieval Latin for barnacle. [8] The brant and the similar barnacle goose were previously considered to be the same species and believed to be the same creature as the barnacle. [8] That myth can be dated back to at least ...