Animal, Vegetable, Lamb: The Zoophyte from Tartary

By Thom Sliwowski

In the Middle Ages, rumours spread across Europe of a strange hybrid creature, half-animal, half-plant, known as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. A hoax based on fern rhizomes? A euphemism for culled fetal lambs? Or perhaps a medieval misapprehension of cotton? Thom Sliwowski traces the roots of this fabled zoophyte. more