When you hear the name vegetable sheep, you might think of piece of cauliflower cleverly crafted in ovine form. However, vegetable sheep is also the common name for several high alpine species endemic to the mountains of New Zealand. They are large shrubs that present the appearance of a sheeps because their surface is covered in many, small, very woolly leaves packed as tightly as possible. According to L. Cockayne’s New Zealand Plants and Their Story (1910), “stems, leaves, and all are pressed into a dense, hard, convex mass, making an excellent and appropriate seat for a wearied botanist.” This cushion is an adaptation to the high alpine habitat that maintains warmth and protects the plant from a weighty snowpack, and the carpet of hair-like trichomes on the leaves are reflective as well as insulating. The vegetable sheep morphology has evolved multiple times independently in different tribes of the daisy family (Raoulia eximia and Haastia pulvinaris). The lore is that when Englishmen first arrived in New Zealand, their sheepdogs were so misled by these species that they actually tried to chase and herd them!

--Ben Blackman