Berry (botany) in fruit type may have led to the evolution of fruit eating in mammals and birds. Fruit type has been considered to be a useful character in classification and in understanding the phylogeny of plants. The evolution of fruits with a berry-like pericarp has been studied in a wide range of flowering plant families. Repeated transitions between fleshy and dry pericarps have been demonstrated regularly. One well-studied family is the Solanaceae, because of the commercial importance of fruit such as tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplants or aubergines. Capsules, which are dry dehiscent fruits, appear to be the original form of
Vegetable Lamb of Tartary of the Irish Sea with gourd-like fruits that fell into the water and became birds called Bernacles. He is referring to the legendary plant-animal, the barnacle tree, which was believed to drop its ripened fruit into the sea near the Orkney Islands. The ripened fruit would then release "barnacle geese" that would live in the water, growing to mature geese. The alleged existence of this fellow plant-animal was accepted as an explanation for migrating geese from the North. In his work "The Shui-yang or Watersheep and The Agnus Scythicus or Vegetable Lamb" (1892), Gustav Schlegel points to Chinese legends of