Believe it or not, surgeons in Russia have found a two-inch fir tree “growing inside a 28-year-old man’s lung”.

A team at the Izhevsk hospital in Russia’s Ural region claims to have discovered the two-inch fir tree inside Artyom Sidorkin’s lung when they opened him up to remove what they’d earlier thought to be a serious cancer. Sidorkin had complained of extreme chest pain and had been coughing up blood.

“We were 100 per cent sure. We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour. I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery,” lead surgeon Vladimir Kamashev was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying.

Before removing part of the man’s lung, the surgeon investigated the tissue. “I thought I was hallucinating. I asked my assistant to have a look: ‘Come and see this — we have got a fir tree here’. He nodded in shock. I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things,” Dr Kamashev said.

Medical staff said that Sidorkin must have inhaled a seed, which later sprouted into a small fir tree inside his lung. The spruce, touching the man’s capillaries and causing severe pain, was removed.

“It was very painful. But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me. I’m so relieved it’s not cancer,” Sidorkin said.