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The expression "Lusus Naturae" was used by naturalists starting from the 16th century to classify those phenomena which apparently do not follow the natural order of things. It's not a happy expression: it evokes disturbing scenarios, in which what goes beyond the norm appears repulsive and distant. The use of the expression in the Italian language ("Scherzo della natura") is mainly in a negative sense. Yet, to be honest, even this far from disturbing girl would fall within the definition: a hybrid between woman and plant, numerous twigs are born from her head, a luxuriant miniature forest in the center of which an inextinguishable flame develops. On the other hand, the freaks of nature of seventeenth-century scholars also included fossils, which were solely to blame for not having a place in the scientific knowledge of the time. 67075317
