Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 July 30

= July 30 =

Are there any plant-based dragons in mythlogy?
Inspired by something I saw discussed on Youtube comments recently about the Pokemon, Flapple. It's a tiny dragon that grew inside an apple and uses apple skin for wings and armor and can spit highly-acidic apple juice as a weapon. It's previous form is just an apple with eyes and a tail sticking out (which you can also evolve into an apple pie/dragon hybrid if you have the game's other version).

There were two main theories about the origin of this - one about how it was a reference to "dragon fruit" and another being "imagine if you bit into an apple and found a *wyrm* inside". But someone else said that there were actually dragons that grew on trees like fruit, and resembled such, in mythology from somewhere (non specific). I googled around but I couldn't find any reference to the latter. Any ideas, anyone? Iloveparrots (talk) 15:44, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Ningishzida, Lord of the Good Tree, was associated with snakes, one being a dragon (Mušḫuššu). --Askedonty (talk) 17:07, 30 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Not mythology but veggies: Triffids. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:50, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Dragon's teeth (mythology) have a vegetable quality: when sown in the ground, they grow like seeds (but not into dragons). Animism around the world features tree spirits with simultaneous vegetable and animal aspects. The Nariphon tree grows maidens as fruit, but not dragons. The green man is a vegetable human. Serpents and plants blend together in Viking art: in one carving at Urnes Stave Church a serpent is even emitting a fleur-de-lis from its mouth. These entangled scenes, and the dragon-like gripping beast, may be to do with Odin, who did something complicated with the tree Yggdrasil (hanging himself on it for nine days in a sacrifice of himself to himself, and presumably he was OK afterward since his destiny is to be eaten by the wolf Fenrir): among his 170 or more names is Fengr, which means "catcher" in the sense of snagging fangs or thorns. The French dragon-thing Peluda lived in a river and had long green hair, which has often made me wonder if it was part plant. In the Danish folktale The dragon and daughter, a worm found in a nut grows into a dragon. Card Zero  (talk) 19:26, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. There is also the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary/Borametz - had that in my mind before, but I couldn't think of the name. A plant that grows sheep as fruit. I was imagining something like that, but with dragons.
 * Actually, the Borametz would make a good basis for a Pokemon.
 * Speaking of sheep - is there such a thing as a sheep-dragon anywhere? There is also an electric sheep Pokemon (Philip K. Dick reference perhaps?) that ends up as dragon-typed too, if you mega-evolve it. Iloveparrots (talk) 20:45, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Also not mythology:
 * A Herbivorous Dragon of 5,000 Years Gets Unfairly Villainized
 * Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon ISBN 9780613337021
 * --136.54.99.98 (talk) 00:05, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Very interesting question! Some of the weird art of the Voynich manuscript seems to be going in this direction, but I'm not sure of specifics. This website analyses a lot of it. Blythwood (talk) 02:44, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Evolution swiftly culled fire-breathing plant-based dragons. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:09, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Largest history forum on the internet
I’d be interested to know what the largest history forum is on the internet. I found a few forums online, but I wasn’t sure how big the forums are. Interstellarity (talk) 18:49, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily the "largest", but Historium Forum might be of interest. Here are Top 15 History Forums, Discussion and Message Boards from Feedspot. 136.54.99.98 (talk) 22:45, 30 July 2023 (UTC)