Dropped for me fairly early on in the Horde's questline in Pandaria.
It dropped from the sha infested tigers in Jade Forest. I had an alchemy level of 525 at the time and I had not yet trained alchemy so was capped at 525. This means you do not need to train MoP alchemy to see it drop, I expect 500 alchemy and over is adequate.
Quest
Strange Spherical Stone
Quest facts and objectives from the current retail game data.
The highest voted Wowhead comments for this page. They are community notes, not TheWoWDB comments.
to complete the quest- if you didn't get the popup auto complete thingy (my golden lotus were in my herb bag):
1) place 3 golden lotus in your regular bags.
2) open your quest log and select the quest.
3) there will be a "complete quest" button at the bottom of the quest log window.
4) push button.>:D
5) enjoy your new zen state.
Golden Lotus is it's own node (as far as I've seen) and the quest doesn't pop up for auto-hand-in unless it's in a regular bag, not an herb bag.
At a glance
Strange Spherical Stone is a quest for level 30-35. It rewards 1 reward item and 4,800 experience.
Quest facts
The client quest POI data records no map location for this quest, so no map is shown.
Check whether you have already completed this quest
in-game: /run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(30597))
Description
This beautiful stone clearly has magical potential... at least to one trained in alchemy. You are certain that with the right herbs native to Pandaria, this stone could become very useful.
Community notes from Wowhead · 55 comments
Top 3 shown aboveThe comments below were written by Wowhead users. They are community notes, not TheWoWDB comments. See them in context on Wowhead.
The top 3 are shown in Top Comments above. Read all 55 on Wowhead.
Reward details
Items you receive
“Can be used for transmutations in place of a Philosopher's Stone.”
Item facts are the current retail client’s (ItemSparse); the specialisations for a pick-one item are the ones the Blizzard quest API lists; faction and currency text is the client’s own. Lowest listed price = the US commodity auction house now.