Bonus Episode 5: Sheep Seeds & Goose Trees - The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of Rooted! This week, we are going back to basics- it’ll just be you, me, and a super wild story I found that your ears NEED to hear (or at least, I thought they did)! We will have more guests soon, but for now, I just wanted to spend a little extra time with you guys! 

This month I will be telling you all the tale of the vegetable lamb of Tartary- is it a plant? Is it an animal? Is it vegan?! These are all things I don’t really know, but am curious about your takes on. 

Get a snack, settle in, and get ready to go on a bit of a ride to me as we go all the way back to the 1800’s central asia to learn a little more about this ancient zoophyte. 

For those unfamiliar, a zoophye is an old-school term for something kind of in between plants and animals- like a sea sponge, or a leichen. But in this case, the zoophyte is a plant, that casually sprouts a  full on lamb- like a living, breathing LAMB as a flower.

The lamb is said to look and feel like your standard, run-of-the-mill sheep, with a soft, fluffy fleece and loud bleating voice, but apparently is MUCH tastier- especially if you’re a wolf…

The flesh is also supposedly a bit different, bearing more resemblance to crab, rather than lamb. These strange beasts were also evidently not the brightest, as it was said that they eat the very plant they grow out of- nibbling and noshing all day long, until they literally eat themselves to death by swallowing every leave that supports the stalk they are being propped up on. From there, the lamb dies, it’s blood becomes sweet like honey, and wolves and humans alike gather roud to get a taste of this guy. 

Humans also apparently made clothing and other textiles from the fleece of the lamb, which was worth quite a bit of money, and was held in very high regard. 

The vegetable lamb of Tartary wasn’t even the only legend like this, with mentions of similar plants dating back to around 400 AD in jewish folklore. 

The lambs themselves were said to grow from a gourd like seed, which is widely believed to stem from the irish folktale of the Barnacle tree, which would bare “Barnacle geese” or geese who grew on tree branches from their literal feet, from gourds that would float in the ocean…I feel like i’m following the logic here, which makes me feel both at one with history, and terrified at how easily I was able to make all of this make sense. 

Anyway, barnacle geese were really just meant to help explain how geese ended up just disappearing and then coming back after winter, but before we knew about migration, we just had to assume they were fruits that would develop in the spring, and be gone by fall, only to be replenished with next years harvest. 

As if this wasn't all strange enough, these beasts sparked quite a bit of debate in the botanical realm, which scholars arguing anything from whether or not they were truly plants, to what kind of plants they could be related to, to if they were truly real. 

While there was certainly plenty of stir around the plant,  it wasn’t until the late 1600’s that a German Doctor named Engelbert Kaempfer, backed by the entirety of persia, set sail to find one of these bad boys. Upon arriving in the area of central asia and interviewing every local they could get to talk to them, they concluded that they had been mistaken. That the vegetable lamb of tartary wasn't real, and that we all needed to move on…

That was , until One man, Sir Hans Sloane , found that the rhizome from a chinese fern tree had been harvested, and was being passed off as an initial bloom from a true vegetable lamb of tartary plant, as the blooms can be quite fleecy, and have an actual lamb shape to them when the rhizome is inverted and pruned properly. Mystery solved?! 

Kind of….today,  some people think this was just a clever way to describe cotton, but I want to believe in the majesty that is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, and hopefully you do too.