Summary
Summary of The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 1 h 50 min1 h 25 min fast, 2 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 26,000 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1887by Henry Lee
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
A lamb grows from a plant
The vegetable lamb takes two forms in the tale. In one, a ripe fruit splits open to reveal a small lamb whose fleece can be woven into clothes. In the other, a living lamb hangs from a flexible stalk by its navel, grazing until the surrounding grass runs out. Then the stalk withers and the lamb dies.
Writers give it blood, bones and tender flesh. These additions make the creature vivid, but its strange mixture of plant and animal also suggests that something has gone wrong in the telling.
Key idea 2
Trusted witnesses give the tale authority
Travel accounts carry the lamb across Europe.
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Key idea 3
Learning does not prevent a mistake
Scholars bring the lamb into their arguments.
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Key idea 4
The search finds only ordinary sheep
Travellers begin looking where the lamb is supposed to live.
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Key idea 5
The fern explanation fits too poorly
Animal-shaped objects made from tree fern roots seem to offer an answer.
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Key idea 6
Older accounts point toward cotton
Lee turns from medieval travellers to much earlier writers.
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Key idea 7
Small additions turn fact into fable
Lee proposes that figurative language and resemblance work together.
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Key idea 8
Cotton moves through trade and conquest
The real plant has a history of its own.
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Key idea 9
Look for the fact beneath legend
Lee's investigation offers a method for thinking about extraordinary claims.
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Who it’s for
You will enjoy this book if you love curious legends, the detective work of tracing a myth to its source, old travellers' tales, or the story of how a humble plant clothed the world.
What this book is
Imagine a plant that grows a lamb. It is a whole living animal, fixed to a stalk by its navel, bending down to graze the grass around it. When the grass within reach is gone, the stalk withers and the lamb dies. For four hundred years, almost everyone in Europe believed in this creature.
Henry Lee, a Victorian naturalist, takes up the puzzle in The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, written in 1887. Everyone said the legend came from Chinese toy animals carved from tree fern roots. Lee says this is wrong. Every old myth he has traced, he argues, began with a true fact that writers garbled. You follow his case, and then learn how cotton reached Europe.
In this summary
- 1A lamb grows from a plantFree
- 2Trusted witnesses give the tale authority
- 3Learning does not prevent a mistake
- 4The search finds only ordinary sheep
- 5The fern explanation fits too poorly
- 6Older accounts point toward cotton
- 7Small additions turn fact into fable
- 8Cotton moves through trade and conquest
- 9Look for the fact beneath legend
The fable describes a plant that is also a lamb
The fable has two forms. In the first, a tree grows from a seed like a melon or gourd. When the fruit ripens, it splits open and a small lamb lies inside, perfect in every limb. The people of Tartary are said to weave caps and clothes from its white fleece.
In the second form, the lamb is a living animal joined by its navel to a flexible stem rooted in the soil. The stem bends so the lamb can graze every plant within reach. When the pasture is eaten bare, the stem dries up and the lamb dies. The name Borametz, Lee says, comes from a Tartar word meaning lamb.
Writers added details with every retelling. The creature has bones, blood and tender flesh. Some said the meat tasted like crab. Wolves hunt it eagerly, but no other meat-eating beast will touch it.
Notice how odd the picture is. A creature half plant and half animal is far from anything a farmer could find in a field. That strangeness is the first sign the story has been stretched far from its start.
The fable is a plant-animal that grazes on its tether and dies when the grass runs out.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
Why did respectable witnesses make the vegetable lamb seem believable?
Right. “The tale grew more convincing because each teller trusted the one before him.”Not quite. “The tale grew more convincing because each teller trusted the one before him.”
What real plant does Lee identify behind the vegetable lamb legend?
Right. “Older Greek writers had already described the true source, the cotton plant of India.”Not quite. “Older Greek writers had already described the true source, the cotton plant of India.”
According to Lee, what helps turn a true report into a fable?
Right. “One is figurative language that later readers take literally.”Not quite. “One is figurative language that later readers take literally.”
Go deeper: the whole of The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
About 1 h 50 min to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 26,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 1 h 50 min
Questions about The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
What is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?
It is a medieval legend of a plant that grows a living lamb, either inside a fruit or on a stalk attached by its navel. It was also called the Scythian Lamb and the Borametz.
What does Henry Lee say the Vegetable Lamb really was?
Lee argues that the legend began with true reports of the cotton plant, whose ripe pod bursts to show white wool. Ancient Greek writers described this wool tree long before the tale of the lamb grew.
What is the Barometz fern, and why does Lee reject it?
It is a tree fern whose hairy rootstock the Chinese shaped into small toy animals. Lee says it grows far from Tartary, was meant as a tan-coloured dog, and has the wrong colour for white fleece.
Is the Vegetable Lamb a true story, and when was the book written?
The lamb plant is a myth with no real creature behind it. Lee wrote his study in 1887, drawing on travellers and classical writers from Herodotus to the seventeenth century.
Why does the book also cover the history of cotton?
Because Lee's answer is cotton, his second chapter follows it from India through Alexander's trade routes, Muslim Spain, the Americas and the Suez Canal, showing how the plant reached Europe.
Cite this edition
Lee, Henry. The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vegetable-lamb-of-tartary.
Lee, H. (2026). The vegetable lamb of Tartary. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vegetable-lamb-of-tartary (Original work published 1887)
Lee, Henry. The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vegetable-lamb-of-tartary.
@book{lee2026vegetable,
author = {Lee, Henry},
title = {The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-vegetable-lamb-of-tartary},
note = {First published 1887}
}
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