Weird Things: The Tartary Lamb

This story is so peculiar that I am not sure how to categorise it! But what it does tell us is how cultures and learned people get things wrong. 

In every era, people are at the peak of their technological power. It's very easy to believe what we read or are told now - we're super-educated, and advanced, right? Well, these people thought the same! Even in my lifetime, big 'certainties' have been overturned. Columbus being the first non-Native-American to find North America, for example. Now it's been proven that the Vikings got there before him - and in fact there are probabilities that many other cultures - from Asia too - were trading and lurking in the Americas, a long time before that!

I guess an overall pinch-of-salt* is required for a lot of things. And an understanding that what we're taught is 'likely' - but that knowledge is probably fluid. Who knows what better understandings the world will have 150 years from now? The fluidity thing is quite exciting, in actual fact!

ANYWAY, 150 years ago, in Europe, people still believed in the Tartary Lamb (aka Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Scythian Lamb or Barometz). And they'd believed it for 500 years or more. The Barometz was debated by erudite writers for centuries.

What was it? 
A plant, which had animal sheep as its fruits. Bonkers, right? To us. Well, maybe not so bonkers! Early periods of exploration to Africa and Asia had brought back tales of all sorts of amazing plants and creatures. And to be fair, if you'd never seen or heard of one before, the giraffe, or the meat-eating pitcher-plant, for example, are pretty damned weird concepts too. And people back then couldn't take photographs, or jump on planes and easily explore, to prove things yes or no. (Tartary was an old word for a vast region crossing what's now Central/Northern/East Asia, btw.)

So, anyway, reports came back to Europe of this crazy plant. It was believed that it produced lamb-fruits, connected via umbilical cord to the main plant. The lambs grew, and were flesh-and-blood, but couldn't be disconnected from the mother-plant and live. Reports were of one sheep per plant, or several (which began woolly life in pods - arranged a bit like melons or courgettes!) Still attached, the lambs would feed by grazing nearby vegetation, and when it was all consumed, they died. The lambs were only eaten by wolves, but their wool was apparently used to manufacture nice garments for humans.

Nobody is exactly sure why the belief in this plant/animal endured for so long. There's a similar mythical creature in old Jewish texts, apparently. And theories suggest explorers were further confused by seeing Indian cotton pods (which contained 'wool'), or an Asian fern with especially furry roots, which Chinese made into small, sheep-like toys.

Anyway, there are a lot of unknowns in the story of the Tartary Lamb! There are mythical creatures worldwide, of course - mermaids, dragons, unicorns, kirin, trolls. But this one seems to have garnered genuine (erroneous) scientific discussion. Below is the fern and a cotton pod - what do you think?

The furry fern: Cibotium Barometz

An Indian cotton pod - bit sheepy?

* This is a British English idiom. To 'take something with a pinch-of-salt' means that you listen to or understand something, but don't take it 100% seriously. 


Photo credits: gutenberg.org; Pinterest; Fiber Feast.