Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're heading into
Speaker 2: the Old Vault. This episode originally aired April twenty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and it's part two of our series
Speaker 2: on the vegetable Lamb of Tartary.
Speaker 1: Dig in sounds delicious.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: two of our series on the vegetable Lamb of Tartary,
Speaker 2: a legendary creature that appeared in medieval and Renaissance European
Speaker 2: bestiaries and travelogs, such as the Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Speaker 2: If you haven't heard part one of this series yet,
Speaker 2: this is one where you should really go back and
Speaker 2: check that out first so you'll know what we're talking
Speaker 2: about today. But if you're rejoining us after last time,
Speaker 2: a quick refresher on these legends. The idea was that
Speaker 2: somewhere in Tartary, which is a vast stretch of the
Speaker 2: Asian mainland, including what is now Central Asia, parts of China,
Speaker 2: all of Mongolia, and the whole eastern part of Russia.
Speaker 2: There was said to live a type of zoophyte or
Speaker 2: plant animally a creature with both animal and vegetable properties,
Speaker 2: combining aspects of a sort of bush or shrub with
Speaker 2: a sheep or a lamb. And some sources, like Sir
Speaker 2: John Mandeville describe a plant that grows gourd like fruits,
Speaker 2: and when you cut these gourds open, they reveal fully
Speaker 2: formed lambs inside, tiny little lambs which have flesh and
Speaker 2: bone and blood. He says, they're real lambs, and I
Speaker 2: ate one of the lambs and it was good. Others
Speaker 2: or is describe something even more fantastical. I think these
Speaker 2: are usually sources that come a little bit later than Mandeville.
Speaker 2: They say that there is a plant that grows a
Speaker 2: fully formed adult lamb or sheep, which is attached to
Speaker 2: the ground via a plant stem that grows into its stomach,
Speaker 2: and the lamb can only survive while there is still
Speaker 2: herbage for it to graze on within the radius of
Speaker 2: the stem, so the stem is kind of like a tether,
Speaker 2: and once it eats all of the grass within reach,
Speaker 2: it starves to death unless it is killed and eaten
Speaker 2: by wolves or by humans first. And this lamb or
Speaker 2: sheep is also said to be a real animal in composition,
Speaker 2: having bones and blood and in whichever form. This creature
Speaker 2: is known under many different names, but the most commons
Speaker 2: the most common ones would be like the lamb of Tartary,
Speaker 2: the Tartar lamb, or the Boromets or the Barromets. Now,
Speaker 2: toward the end of the last episode, we talked about
Speaker 2: phylogenetic reasons that you would not expect to actually see
Speaker 2: an organism like this, so we can be pretty sure,
Speaker 2: without knowing anything else, that this did not actually exist.
Speaker 2: Because of course, plants and animals may have many individual
Speaker 2: characteristics that are superficially similar, whether for some adapted reason
Speaker 2: like mimicry or just by chance converging ecological needs and
Speaker 2: so forth, but a plant will never actually grow a
Speaker 2: sheep that has actual muscle, flesh, and bones and blood.
Speaker 2: So the question is where did these legends actually come from?
Speaker 2: And a couple of major explanations have been offered over
Speaker 2: the centuries. One very good source that I referred to
Speaker 2: in the last episode, and I'm going to keep talking
Speaker 2: about in this one is a book by a nineteenth
Speaker 2: century English naturalist named Henry Lee, and it's called The
Speaker 2: Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. This was published in eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Now, in that Karuba paper that I referenced in the
Speaker 1: first episode, the author points out that that various folks
Speaker 1: over over the years sort of the mythic era of
Speaker 1: the bora mets ever since at least you know, the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, during that period where commentators have known that
Speaker 1: there's no such thing, but have been curious as to
Speaker 1: why such a thing might have been invented, and invented
Speaker 1: over time that that you know, various folks have chimed
Speaker 1: in on it and brought up various plant specimens, quote
Speaker 1: natural and manipulated to possibly explain it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so one of the possible explanations that has been
Speaker 1: brought forth was the the wooly fern explanation and this
Speaker 1: is this is one of the possible explanations that Rose
Speaker 1: mentions Carol Rose mentions in passing and specifically it was
Speaker 1: suggested that the fern's rhizome or you know, the root
Speaker 1: system might be the lamb in question. And this is
Speaker 1: actually reflected in the scientific name for this species, Subodium borromets,
Speaker 1: and it's also known as the golden chicken fern. And
Speaker 1: I I did a picture of this for you, Joe.
Speaker 1: I actually ended up going to the Atlanta Botanical Garden
Speaker 1: over the weekend, and I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: ask anybody if they had one of these around, But
Speaker 1: I kept looking. I was on the lookout for this
Speaker 1: chicken fern, for this possible explanation for the vegetable lamb
Speaker 1: of tardary, but I did not see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a nice furry fern, I mean, does look an
Speaker 2: awful lot like fur. This explanation, I believe first arose
Speaker 2: at the end of the seventeenth century. So, as we
Speaker 2: discussed in the previous part, by this time authors were
Speaker 2: already skeptical of the zoophyte story and they started coming
Speaker 2: up with alternative ways of sourcing the myth. And Henry
Speaker 2: Lee chronicles this by noting that in sixteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: a Sir Hans Sloan offered a presentation to the Royal
Speaker 2: Society of London of a very strange object, and in
Speaker 2: his paper he provides an illustration. Rob I've attached a
Speaker 2: copy of this for you to look at, but we
Speaker 2: can read his illustration and then add anything we want.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to read from the section of Sloan's
Speaker 2: paper that Lee quotes here, but I made some abridgements
Speaker 2: because it was kind of long. So Sloane writes, the
Speaker 2: figure represents what is commonly but falsely in India called
Speaker 2: the tartarian lamb. Sent down from Thence by a mister Buckley.
Speaker 2: This was more than a foot long, as big as
Speaker 2: one's wrist, having seven protuberances, and towards the end some
Speaker 2: footstalks about three or four inches long, exactly like the foot,
Speaker 2: like the footstalks of ferns, both without and within. Most
Speaker 2: part of this was covered with a down of a
Speaker 2: dark yellowish snuff color, some of it a quarter of
Speaker 2: an inch long. It seemed to be shaped by art
Speaker 2: to imitate a lamb, the roots or climbing parts being
Speaker 2: made to resemble the body, and the extant footstalks the legs.
Speaker 2: I have been assured by mister Brown, who has made
Speaker 2: very good observations in the East Indies, that he has
Speaker 2: been told by those who lived in China that this
Speaker 2: down or hair is used by them for the stopping
Speaker 2: of blood in fresh wounds, as cobwebs are with us.
Speaker 2: And I'll come back to that, and that they have
Speaker 2: it in so great a esteem that few houses are
Speaker 2: without it. But on trials I have made of it.
Speaker 2: Though I may believe it innocent, yet I am sure
Speaker 2: it is not infallible. Now, I have several things to
Speaker 2: say about this. First of all, I suspect Sloan is
Speaker 2: wrong that the Lamb of Tartary is actually a legend
Speaker 2: in India or anywhere in Asia, because as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, this was a legend in Europe about Asia,
Speaker 2: not a legend in Asia itself. Like we talked about
Speaker 2: Engelbert Camphor in the last episode, who traveled all about Asia,
Speaker 2: and he certainly went to Persia, but like different parts
Speaker 2: of Russia and all over. And I think he said
Speaker 2: that nobody knew what he was talking about when he
Speaker 2: asked about.
Speaker 1: This, right, Yeah, they don't know what it's about. They
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm talking about when I bring this up.
Speaker 1: It's just pure invention, and the European invention, to be clear.
Speaker 2: But the other thing I would add to this, and
Speaker 2: this is a sidebar, but I couldn't let it go
Speaker 2: were cobwebs, as in spider webs, actually used by the
Speaker 2: English to stop blood flow when somebody had a big
Speaker 2: cut they're bleeding profusely, like, oh no, Johnny got brained
Speaker 2: with an ax. Somebody get a bunch of spiders.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had not heard this before, and I feel
Speaker 1: like it would have come up. I would have at
Speaker 1: least seen it on Outlander, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, exactly. So I looked this up and yes,
Speaker 2: this apparently was a remedy for bleeding in some traditional
Speaker 2: European medicine. So the source I found on this was
Speaker 2: a book by Kathleen Stalker called Remedies and Rituals Folk
Speaker 2: Medicine in Norway in the New Land, published by the
Speaker 2: Minnesota Historical Society in two thousand and seven, and this
Speaker 2: comes in a section of the book talking about home
Speaker 2: remedies of Scandinavian peoples, and she says that in some
Speaker 2: cases they would cram parts of beehives and wasp nests
Speaker 2: into their wounds because they believed it would help make
Speaker 2: the blood clot And apparently some of them did the
Speaker 2: same thing with spiderwebs. So here's a quote that Stalker
Speaker 2: includes quote stopping blood with cobwebs was so common that
Speaker 2: children learned to apply the remedy themselves, says Hilda Kongsburg
Speaker 2: born eighteen ninety nine in Rollsoy, East, Norway. And then
Speaker 2: this is quoting Kongsburg. When we children were playing, we
Speaker 2: sometimes fell and got hurt. Even for deep wounds or
Speaker 2: a badly pinched finger, we would find cobwebs, Kinglevev in
Speaker 2: her dialect, sprinkling. Finally shaved sugar in the wound. First
Speaker 2: we would stuff it with the Kingelvev and wrap a
Speaker 2: rag around it. Soon it would heal. Folks, don't try
Speaker 2: this at home. I think there may be some hygiene
Speaker 2: issues here. I would recommend sticking with sterile bandages if
Speaker 2: at all possible. The other detail also gets me. So
Speaker 2: it's not just putting, like framing spider webs in your wound,
Speaker 2: but also sugar shaved sugar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sugar, something sweet, and then also a little spider web,
Speaker 1: a little bit of that Kinglevev.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Well, I was wondering if the reasoning is
Speaker 2: you want the blood to clot and these are both
Speaker 2: things that are sticky, sugar and spiderwebs.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I mean it does go to
Speaker 1: show that. Yeah, I wouldn't see this an outlander. I
Speaker 1: should be watching that show Vikings, and then I'm surely
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna stop up a wound with some kinglevev.
Speaker 2: Well, as a commentary note on this sidebar, I will
Speaker 2: also say this just makes me think of regression to
Speaker 2: the mean. We have a whole episode on that concept
Speaker 2: if you want to check it out. But as a
Speaker 2: note of scientific intellectual hygiene, you can't know if a
Speaker 2: treatment works just by giving it to somebody who's in
Speaker 2: a bad state and then seeing if they get better. Eg.
Speaker 2: If a person with a cut stops bleeding. Because people
Speaker 2: often get better on their own, you have to have
Speaker 2: a control group. You take bleeding people, split them up randomly,
Speaker 2: some get spider webs, some get some kind of control,
Speaker 2: and then you'd have to see if the people with
Speaker 2: spider webs do better than the control group, not just
Speaker 2: if somebody with the spider web happens to get better.
Speaker 1: Right right. It's like if you're having some sort of
Speaker 1: ailment that's bothering you and you just decide to try
Speaker 1: some sort of a weird tea and then you end
Speaker 1: up feeling better. Well, maybe the tea helped, But maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't. Maybe you just happened to be drinking the
Speaker 1: weird tea whilst your body was going about the It's
Speaker 1: regular healing regime, right.
Speaker 2: Anyway. Coming all back to Hans Sloan, So Sloan at
Speaker 2: the end of the seventeenth century, this was the year
Speaker 2: sixteen ninety eight. He believes he has identified the origin
Speaker 2: of the Borometz legend, and it is this little quadrupedal
Speaker 2: plant sculpture that is built out of the downy rhizome
Speaker 2: of a Chinese species of fern. Now, over the following centuries,
Speaker 2: a few additional specimen of this sort of Chinese plant
Speaker 2: sculpture were publicized by European collectors and museums, and many
Speaker 2: authors clearly believed this was indeed the source of the myth.
Speaker 2: They thought they had cracked it. You'll remember in the
Speaker 2: last episode, I read that passage from Erasmus Darwin's naturalistic
Speaker 2: poem The Botanic Garden, where he writes about the boromets.
Speaker 2: The lines were even round the pole, the flames of
Speaker 2: love aspire and icy bosoms feel the secret fire cradled
Speaker 2: in snow and fanned by Arctic air shines gentle boromets
Speaker 2: thy golden hair. So why does Darwin specify golden hair
Speaker 2: there when a lot of the older sources said white hair.
Speaker 2: If they said the color at all, well, Henry Lee
Speaker 2: in his book believes this is because Darwin is buying
Speaker 2: into the rhizome theory. So these lamb or dog sculptures
Speaker 2: had a more golden or tan color because that's the
Speaker 2: nature of the plant. The fibers coming off of the
Speaker 2: fern rootstock were white, they were like golden or tan
Speaker 2: or brown. So Lee thinks this is not the correct
Speaker 2: explanation for the origin of the lamb legend, and I
Speaker 2: think I agree with him, But what's his reasoning. Well,
Speaker 2: he goes on a long discussion of the known properties
Speaker 2: of the ferns used to make these sculptures. He says,
Speaker 2: first of all, it is worth noting that we have
Speaker 2: no evidence of these sculptures pre dating the legend. Examples
Speaker 2: only show up long after the legend was already known.
Speaker 2: So if there is any link at all, and we
Speaker 2: don't know that there is. But if there is any link,
Speaker 2: why not suppose that the legend inspired the fern root
Speaker 2: sculptures and not the other way around. Furthermore, there are
Speaker 2: actually only a handful of specimens of these sculptures, so
Speaker 2: that they are a little, you know, quadrupedal animal looking things.
Speaker 2: Somebody is clearly made out of this this fern rhizome
Speaker 2: with the stems cut to look like legs of a
Speaker 2: sheep or a dog or something. But are we sure,
Speaker 2: I mean, so we have like four or five of
Speaker 2: these maybe in total. Are we sure they were ever
Speaker 2: widespread enough to have given rise to this story? But
Speaker 2: then so these are I think the more minor concerns.
Speaker 2: Lee gets to the really serious objections to this explanation
Speaker 2: after this. First of all, he says, these ferns do
Speaker 2: not grow in the land that was then known as Tartari.
Speaker 2: So Tartari again was the more northern part of the
Speaker 2: Asian mainland at the time. These plants are from the
Speaker 2: southern part of the Asian mainland. They're from like parts
Speaker 2: of northeastern India, and they're from southern China and like
Speaker 2: a I believe, the Malaysian Peninsula. So this would have
Speaker 2: the legends sourcing them in the wrong place. And also
Speaker 2: the fern in no way really matches the botanical properties
Speaker 2: of the plant described in the stories, except that it
Speaker 2: is downy, so it's said to grow from a seed
Speaker 2: that is like a gourd or a melon. Ferns are
Speaker 2: nothing like this. They don't grow from a seed like
Speaker 2: a gord or a melon. Furthermore, some of the legends
Speaker 2: say that these seeds were deliberately planted by the people
Speaker 2: around Indi, hating that this plant, whatever it was, if
Speaker 2: it existed, is used in some kind of agriculture, and
Speaker 2: these ferns are not like that. Also, what are we
Speaker 2: to make of the early version of the story, like
Speaker 2: the one told by Sir John Mandeville or the person
Speaker 2: claiming to be Sir John Mandeville saying that, Okay, you
Speaker 2: take one of these gourds, you cut it open, and
Speaker 2: then inside the fruit, that's where you find the lamb
Speaker 2: that doesn't resemble this fern, you know, animal sculpture in
Speaker 2: any way. And finally, the color thing. The legends describe
Speaker 2: the wool of the vegetable lamb as white when they
Speaker 2: mentioned the color at all, and the wooly fibers of
Speaker 2: the fern rhizome are more golden or tan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you look at at actual photographs of
Speaker 1: this fern and it does look it looks furry. It
Speaker 1: looks like alf hath dyed and ferns hath sprung from
Speaker 1: his body, you know. And I'll also add that this
Speaker 1: illustration you shared with the stems coming up, this is
Speaker 1: from Philosophical Transactions, black and white illustration. You know. These
Speaker 1: these actually to me anyway, they look kind of like
Speaker 1: lamb chops. The way that they have them angled. There's
Speaker 1: curvature to them, and you do see that curvature in
Speaker 1: images all of the actual fern, the actual willly fern.
Speaker 1: But but but I only really draw this comparison when
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about lamb and lamb meat, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at these two images. I'm not sure if I saw
Speaker 1: this in the wild, I would think, whoa, this is
Speaker 1: totally the body of a dead brown sheep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it were, I mean, if it were the
Speaker 2: lamb chops thing. Obviously, like you're saying, they would have
Speaker 2: to be subliminal, because I think these these these footstalks
Speaker 2: here are supposed to be the legs of the lamb,
Speaker 2: Like the downy part the rhizome is the body and
Speaker 2: then the stalks coming off of it are the legs.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they do look like the bones poking out
Speaker 2: of a rack of lamb. Yeah, after the so called
Speaker 2: frenching is done to the bones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's term. But certainly the whole thing with the
Speaker 1: if you cut into the rhizome, you're not going to
Speaker 1: find blood, You're not going to find bones and so forth.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that doesn't hold up at all.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Lee summarizes by saying, even if I had
Speaker 2: no better explanation to offer, I should be led to
Speaker 2: the conclusion that the identification of these tawny toy dogs
Speaker 2: made in China from the root of a wild fern,
Speaker 2: the spores of which are as small as dust, with
Speaker 2: the vegetable lambs of Scythia that being another name for
Speaker 2: this another name used for this region known as Tartari,
Speaker 2: you know, the Central Asian kind of region whose white
Speaker 2: fleeces were found within the ripe and opening fruit of
Speaker 2: a cultivated plant raised from a large seed, was obviously erroneous,
Speaker 2: and that the origin of the rumor must be software elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And you know what I'm going to say, I agree,
Speaker 2: But Lee has another explanation, and I think he offers
Speaker 2: some pretty compelling evidence that this is the right one.
Speaker 2: The other explanation is that the lamb of Tartari legend
Speaker 2: originates from a confused string of misinterpretations of observations of
Speaker 2: the cotton plant.
Speaker 1: That's right, because what do we have with cotton, Well,
Speaker 1: we have pods ripening and opening to reveal wool essentially,
Speaker 1: or something very similar to wool. And this lines up
Speaker 1: very closely, you know, with what we see in the
Speaker 1: myth as well. Lee throws this back to the writings
Speaker 1: of Herotodas and Theophrastus, whose writings do seem to describe
Speaker 1: something like cotton. Herotodas, writing in the fifth century BCE,
Speaker 1: on a plant found in India, says quote and further,
Speaker 1: there are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of
Speaker 1: which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that
Speaker 1: of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree wool, right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is a mysterious plant to Herotodus, because
Speaker 2: he comes from you know, he comes from a culture
Speaker 2: in which cotton is not normally known. So he says,
Speaker 2: you know, I've read reports that something's going on in
Speaker 2: India where they can grow sheep's wool out of fruits
Speaker 2: on trees. I don't know how they do that, but
Speaker 2: it's really good wool. Another quote from Herodotus. This is
Speaker 2: in chapter forty seven of the same work. He tells
Speaker 2: a story about a corselate that was sent as a
Speaker 2: gift by King Almos the second of Egypt to Sparta,
Speaker 2: and he says that it was quote ornamented with gold
Speaker 2: and fleeces from the trees, and in Lee's explanation, this
Speaker 2: probably means it was padded with cotton that had been
Speaker 2: acquired from the cotton plant fleeces from the trees. Lee
Speaker 2: also cites the ancient Greek writer Tesius that's usually spelled Ctesias.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: Tesius also, who was the contemporary of Herodotus and was
Speaker 2: made prisoner and kept by the king of Persia as
Speaker 2: his court physician for seventeen years, was acquainted with the
Speaker 2: use of a kind of wol, the produce of trees
Speaker 2: for spinning and weaving amongst the natives of India. For
Speaker 2: he mentions in his Indica a fragment quoted by Photius
Speaker 2: quote tree garments, and that he thus referred to clothing
Speaker 2: made from these tree fleeces. We have testimony of Vero quote.
Speaker 2: Tizia says that there are in India trees that bear wool,
Speaker 2: and also one of Alexander the Great's military commanders named Niarcus,
Speaker 2: apparently spoke with wonder about trees in India that somehow
Speaker 2: bore wool like sheep, which was of a surpassing whiteness.
Speaker 1: Theophrastus, on the other hand, shares the following about the
Speaker 1: island of Tylos in the Persian Gulf. Quote, wool bearing
Speaker 1: trees which grow there abundantly have leaves like the vine,
Speaker 1: but smaller. They bear no fruit, but the pod containing
Speaker 1: the wool is about the size of an apple while
Speaker 1: it is closed, and when it is ripe it opens.
Speaker 1: The wool is then gathered from it and woven into
Speaker 1: clothes of various qualities, some inferior but others of great value.
Speaker 1: And Karuba says that the word Theophrastus uses for apple
Speaker 1: melon is also used for sheep.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Oh, you can immediately see how that would perhaps
Speaker 2: cause some confusion.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now there's another thing Lee gets into where I feel
Speaker 2: I need to quote from him directly for his comments
Speaker 2: on our old friend Plenty the elder, whom he blames
Speaker 2: for a literary blunder that introduces one of the main
Speaker 2: components of the medieval version of the legend. So this
Speaker 2: is Lee characterizing Plenty. He says, then comes Plenty, who,
Speaker 2: incompetent and worthless as a naturalist, though admirable as a writer,
Speaker 2: obscured this subject, as he did many others. In his
Speaker 2: natural history. He mentions cotton in four different paragraphs, and
Speaker 2: in every one of them inaccurate. He confuses cotton with
Speaker 2: flax and the fabrics woven of it with linen, and
Speaker 2: treats of silk as a downy substance scraped from the
Speaker 2: leaves of trees. And in transcribing or translating the passage
Speaker 2: from Theophrastus relating to the wool bearing trees, he distorts
Speaker 2: the author's words and states that quote, these trees bear
Speaker 2: gourds the size of a quince, which burst when ripe,
Speaker 2: and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants
Speaker 2: make cloths like valuable linen. Plenty therefore seems to have
Speaker 2: been the author of the gored portion of the story,
Speaker 2: which afterwards obtained currency in Western Europe. Okay, so going
Speaker 2: all the way back to John Mandevila, remember he's writing
Speaker 2: about the Gowerdees, the gourds. That Lee makes a pretty
Speaker 2: compelling case here that this is just a result of
Speaker 2: Plenty the elder mistranslating the work of another ancient historian.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So in all kinds of ancient Greek and Roman literature,
Speaker 2: you have people who are not very familiar or not
Speaker 2: at all familiar with the cotton plant or with tech
Speaker 2: styles made from it. So you can imagine their confusion
Speaker 2: if they say, visit India and see what's being done
Speaker 2: with cotton there, or if they encounter a garment brought
Speaker 2: from India, they would be like, huh, so, wait, there's
Speaker 2: a sheep in this tree, or the tree is growing
Speaker 2: wool somehow, Like it's kind of like trying to imagine
Speaker 2: a tree growing meat or giving milk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and kind of goes back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about in the last episode. If you're not aware
Speaker 1: of the actual gulf between the development of mammals and plants,
Speaker 1: you might encounter something like this and think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: wolf from trees, Well, what else is possible? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I do really like this theory, and I think it
Speaker 1: does match up with everything we know about about cotton
Speaker 1: plants as well, because you know, briefly accounts of cotton
Speaker 1: plants goes back. These accounts go back quite a way,
Speaker 1: so at least in Neolithic sites and what is now
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan five hundred BCE as a date that
Speaker 1: is frequently given out. Evidence of cotton usage even dates
Speaker 1: back a good five thousand years in meso America. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the late medieval period that cotton became known,
Speaker 1: not in Europe, and its exact origin wasn't understood at first,
Speaker 1: other than it came from a plant. Here is something
Speaker 1: like wool and it comes from a plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like this theory seems quite sensible.
Speaker 1: You can imagine how these accounts would have drifted and
Speaker 1: grown as they were related from individual to individual, from
Speaker 1: book to book, from language to language, translation and mistranslation
Speaker 1: in place, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Lee argues that the legend rises from embellishment of
Speaker 2: stories originally based upon ambiguity or confusion in literary sources,
Speaker 2: and this has two major factors. One is the misinterpretation
Speaker 2: of ambiguous or figurative language, and the other is the
Speaker 2: superficial visual similarity of two completely different objects. And so
Speaker 2: the direct linguistic example Lee gives is that Okay, what
Speaker 2: you originally have is reports by people like Herodotus and
Speaker 2: others a plant that quote bore as its fruit fleeces
Speaker 2: which surpassed those of lambs in beauty and excellence. And
Speaker 2: this was soon paraphrased and garbled by other authors as
Speaker 2: quote a plant bearing fruit within which was a little
Speaker 2: lamb having a fleece of surpassing beauty and excellence. So
Speaker 2: the fact that there is in India actually a tree
Speaker 2: with pods that bear wool gets paraphrased, mistranslated, embellished into
Speaker 2: all these other stories a plant that's got goreds, it's
Speaker 2: got lambs in them, or perhaps it merged with the
Speaker 2: pre existing weird stories about a ferocious beast who is
Speaker 2: tied to the ground by a stem that attached to
Speaker 2: the navel. Well, what if that beast was actually one
Speaker 2: of these these lamb plants or these sheep plants, and
Speaker 2: that's where the wool comes from. So, even though Lee
Speaker 2: was writing in the eighteen eighties, I think this ideology
Speaker 2: of the legend still holds up pretty well. It seems
Speaker 2: totally plausible to me absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now. Originally I was thinking about getting into related creatures
Speaker 1: of myth and legend here, and I do, and I
Speaker 1: think we're going to save exploration of other specimens for
Speaker 1: later perhaps, but I do want to read just a
Speaker 1: quick quote from Jorge Lewis Borges and his Book of
Speaker 1: Imaginary Beings. He says we might recall another such case,
Speaker 1: that of the man drake or Mandagora, which screams like
Speaker 1: a man when it is pulled from the ground. There
Speaker 1: is also in one of the circles of Hell, that
Speaker 1: sad forest of suicides, from whose quote broken splints come
Speaker 1: words and blood at once. And that tree dreamed by Chesterton,
Speaker 1: which devoured the birds that nested in its branches, and
Speaker 1: which put out feathers instead of leaves when springtime came.
Speaker 1: That's a great book, by the way, the Book of
Speaker 1: Imaginary Beings, and he chronicles several different beasts that were
Speaker 1: dream by various writers that he was familiar with, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. Borges was very interested in dreams as well
Speaker 1: as creatures and mazes and daggers and so forth. But
Speaker 1: I think we might be able to come back and
Speaker 1: do something on the mandrake. I was doing some more
Speaker 1: reading on that, and I was like, well, this too
Speaker 1: may have legs and demand its own episode. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing we sort of teased in the last episode that
Speaker 1: I wanted to get to as well, is the idea
Speaker 1: of this, well, the vegetable lamb, the vegetable lamb of Tartari.
Speaker 1: Will it ever become a reality? Now, on one level,
Speaker 1: we have to say, yeah, no matter how mad sciencey
Speaker 1: your mad science ideas are. I think the idea of, say,
Speaker 1: genetically engineering a plant that grows a fully bodied sheep
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. I mean again, we come back to that
Speaker 1: gulf between these organisms.
Speaker 2: Right, and also like, why would you do that growing
Speaker 2: a fully formed lamb that had like a brain and
Speaker 2: was grazing on the plants around it. Well, it's mad
Speaker 2: science too, yeah, oh okay, okay, so mad's assuming you
Speaker 2: just want to do it for the heck of it.
Speaker 2: Even then, I'm skeptical that that'll ever happen.
Speaker 1: Or alien mad scientists they just read plenty and they
Speaker 1: think this is what's up. So we can set that aside,
Speaker 1: I think. But you know, it is interesting though from
Speaker 1: a modern perspective, we have to ponder the fact that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're talking about this vegetable lamb and we are seeing
Speaker 1: some amazing advancements in recent decades, in recent years concerning
Speaker 1: flesh that feels very much at home in the imagined
Speaker 1: gardens of tartary. For starters, there's of course the realm
Speaker 1: of plant based meat alternatives. Now, the practice of using
Speaker 1: plant products to simulate meat is of course nothing new
Speaker 1: and can be found in various cultures. Because remember, while
Speaker 1: modern cuisines are sometimes based on meat for every meal,
Speaker 1: this is not the sort of thing that traditional societies
Speaker 1: could necessarily depend on. Certainly, you can find some instances
Speaker 1: of say Arctic cultures that depend quite heavily on meat,
Speaker 1: but other times, like meat is something that is a
Speaker 1: part of a diet that otherwise has a lot of
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables in it, and you're not going to
Speaker 1: necessarily have that kill, have that meat that's going to
Speaker 1: be a part of your diet day to day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a number of reasons, many of them are economic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So for starters, I guess we should point
Speaker 1: out that various fruits and vegetables have long been prized
Speaker 1: for their meat like textures, even if they're not being
Speaker 1: overtly described as such. And I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into a lot of detail on these because it becomes
Speaker 1: more complicated nailing down meat substitute definitions with foods that
Speaker 1: are not themselves food products. For instance, if you cook
Speaker 1: an eggplant or a jackfruit the right way, prepare it
Speaker 1: the right way, you get some strong meat vibes. But
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we can really classify a culinary process
Speaker 1: like that as something that can be defined as a
Speaker 1: meat substitute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know how often some of these
Speaker 2: substances that are considered meat substitutes in dishes today how
Speaker 2: often they were originally thought of that way. Like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of uses of say tofu in Chinese cuisine
Speaker 2: that seemed to me to indicate that it's not being
Speaker 2: treated as just like, well, here's an alternative to meat.
Speaker 2: It's a food in its own right. It's just a
Speaker 2: food like any other food that has its own qualities
Speaker 2: that are prized, And I feel like I can appreciate
Speaker 2: it that way. But I know a lot of times
Speaker 2: Americans might think of tofu as like, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: something you have instead of meat.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think with the tofu example, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking we're talking about tofu, we're talking about
Speaker 1: coagulated soy milk, so you know it's soybean based and
Speaker 1: it's thought to date back about two thousand years to China,
Speaker 1: and so you have something that you know, even if
Speaker 1: you're definitely classifying it as a meat substitute, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's going to be in a dish that's
Speaker 1: devoid of meat. You look at a lot of Chinese
Speaker 1: traditional Chinese dishes, and they have a lot of ingredients
Speaker 1: and sometimes there may be a little bit of meat
Speaker 1: in there. If you had meat, you might throw it
Speaker 1: in just because it's going to add to the flavor
Speaker 1: and all, but it's not. You know, it's not going
Speaker 1: to be a just a big old, necessarily a big
Speaker 1: old chunk of meat out there on the plate. We
Speaker 1: get into this a bit in our Invention episode on
Speaker 1: chopsticks and why chopsticks were so well utilized at least
Speaker 1: for various Chinese cuisines within a large portion of Chinese history.
Speaker 2: I think I've gone on record on the show before
Speaker 2: about my love of Mapo tofu. It's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite dishes. But yeah, most of the time there's going
Speaker 2: to be some kind of meat in it. So if
Speaker 2: you're like a vegetarian, be checked beforehand.
Speaker 1: Tofu, of course, can be super delicious. I just had
Speaker 1: some last night. It was it had been marinated, and
Speaker 1: then it had also been battered, and then I it
Speaker 1: was fried up. It was super good, haded on buns
Speaker 1: like a burger. Now some other of the main meat
Speaker 1: substitutes out there. We of course have satan, and that
Speaker 1: is the gluten based meat alternative that dates back probably
Speaker 1: to sixth century China. We have tempe. This is a
Speaker 1: fermented soybean cake and while the details of its origin
Speaker 1: seemed to be subject to debate, it seems to have
Speaker 1: originated in Indonesia, but the time period varies from centuries
Speaker 1: ago to thousands of years ago, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly what the predominant theory is there in Chinese traditions.
Speaker 1: We also have mocked duck. This is a fake duck meat.
Speaker 1: That's another gluten based product that I believe dates back
Speaker 1: to medieval China. Have you had mock duck before, Joe,
Speaker 1: I have not. It can be quite good. I've had
Speaker 1: it before where I was like, this is great, I
Speaker 1: look forward to having more of it. And I've had
Speaker 1: it before too where I'm like, I'm not so certain
Speaker 1: about this mock duck, but I have had it before
Speaker 1: where it's really good. Yeah, you can frequently purchase it.
Speaker 1: I've never prepared anything with it myself, but you can
Speaker 1: get it like in cans, So suffice to say, yes,
Speaker 1: you can. You know, we've long known that you can
Speaker 1: take plants and things derived from plants, and you can
Speaker 1: make things that scratch your itch for actually consuming meat.
Speaker 1: But of course today we have a number of more
Speaker 1: technologically advanced examples. You know, we have artificial plant based meat,
Speaker 1: such as you know, Beyond Meat. It's a company that
Speaker 1: makes beef, pork, and poultry substitutes. You have Impossible Meat
Speaker 1: that I think is mostly known for the Impossible burger.
Speaker 1: Beyond Meat, I've read is based on pea protein, rice protein,
Speaker 1: mung bean protein, and various other plant products, including red
Speaker 1: beet juice, which is interesting to give it that kind
Speaker 1: of bloody consistency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, simulate the myoglobin, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Impossible Meat is based on the the heme
Speaker 1: heme molecule, a precursor to hemoglobin, and processing various plant
Speaker 1: ingredients to replicate it. But then there's this, and those
Speaker 1: products are fine. I've greatly enjoyed some of these plant
Speaker 1: based meat alternatives, especially of late. But then there's this
Speaker 1: realm beyond the realm of cultivated or cultured or cell
Speaker 1: based meats, in which actual animal cells are grown in
Speaker 1: a lab setting, right.
Speaker 2: So this would be talking about actually, like the cells
Speaker 2: themselves are animal muscle cells, but they're not growing in
Speaker 2: an animal's body. They're just growing on some other substrate
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: To be clear, they're not growing on plants. I'm suggesting that,
Speaker 1: but it's not merely a fact of it resembling meat
Speaker 1: or tasting like meat. It is meat, it is, but
Speaker 1: it is meat that is grown in like a lab setting,
Speaker 1: as opposed to growing as part of an organism in
Speaker 1: a domestic or wild scenario.
Speaker 2: I've been reading about this in bits and pieces from
Speaker 2: years and always very interested in it, and I hadn't
Speaker 2: checked in in a while to see what the recent
Speaker 2: progress on this kind of stuff is.
Speaker 1: Well, there seems to be a lot of movement, and
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of funding that has gone into it.
Speaker 1: I think some of the big questions are going to
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, how does this actually roll out as
Speaker 1: a commercial product that you know, at what point do
Speaker 1: we reach this place in its development? Where it's truly
Speaker 1: economically feasible and so forth. These are concerns with any
Speaker 1: kind of innovation, right. We've talked about that before on invention,
Speaker 1: Like it's one thing to create the thing, but then
Speaker 1: how does it become affordable and desired, etc. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I was reading about this a little bit. I was
Speaker 1: curious what the latest was. And for instance, there's a
Speaker 1: company in Australia called Vow Foods. I was reading about
Speaker 1: them on the Conversation in an article by Catherine Wynne
Speaker 1: and Michelle Colegrave. And they're already growing pork, chicken, kangaroo,
Speaker 1: alpaca and water buffalo. Now none of this is commercially
Speaker 1: available yet, but it gives you a taste of what's possible.
Speaker 1: I've also read about lion meat being produced in such
Speaker 1: a manner by a different company, because I guess the
Speaker 1: thing is, it's all on the table if the meat
Speaker 1: is sourced from a lab rather than a farm or
Speaker 1: the wild.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean you don't even normally think about
Speaker 2: eating like land carnivore meat.
Speaker 1: No, And I can't. I can't imagine i'd want to,
Speaker 1: but I could see I can see the strategy here,
Speaker 1: Like you want to get people interested in the novel
Speaker 1: aspect of it, you know, someone who might not otherwise,
Speaker 1: like why would I Why would I go out and
Speaker 1: have a lab grown hamburger when I can have a
Speaker 1: hamburger from the wild. But if you offer them a
Speaker 1: lion burger, like what's their alternative, They're gonna go out
Speaker 1: and they're going to kill their own lion. They're gonna
Speaker 1: get lion meat on the black market. Interesting, and it
Speaker 1: does seem like there are a number of different Australian
Speaker 1: companies that are involved in this too. So so companies
Speaker 1: like this are using some of the same biomanufacturing technologies
Speaker 1: that have been used in the pharmaceutical industry for years,
Speaker 1: and again they've garnered a lot of investment, especially in
Speaker 1: recent years. And some of the outlying questions, you know,
Speaker 1: come down to just how economically feasible does this become?
Speaker 1: Does it become desirable by the population at large in
Speaker 1: the same way that plant based meats seem to be becoming.
Speaker 2: So how fast can you can you grow like large
Speaker 2: masses of meat from these starting cell cultures?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. As for the taste, I have to stress
Speaker 1: I have not tried any of these myself, I have
Speaker 1: not had the opportunity to, but accounts I've read by
Speaker 1: such such as documentary and Liz Marshall, who did a
Speaker 1: documentary titled Meat the Future with meat spelled like meat.
Speaker 1: You know, she says that it is meat and it
Speaker 1: tastes like meat, so it's not particularly surprising. I've seen
Speaker 1: some other people weighing in where like, Okay, maybe you
Speaker 1: can get into questions of texture, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: like it's meat, it tastes like meat.
Speaker 2: One of the things I read about this would have
Speaker 2: been many years ago now, but like some early prototypes
Speaker 2: of this were people trying to make a lab grown
Speaker 2: burger and one of the main comments was that like
Speaker 2: in many ways it tasted right, but it didn't have
Speaker 2: the fat content wasn't quite right yet. Though, I think
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing that seems like that'd be
Speaker 2: pretty easy to get around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now as far as actual lamb and cheap meat goes,
Speaker 1: because we are talking about the vegetable lamb of CARTERI.
Speaker 1: After all, you know, lamb is a mammal meat that
Speaker 1: many fine quite delicious, and I have to say back
Speaker 1: when I ate mammal meat, I was really partial to
Speaker 1: a particular lamb tagine stew. So definitely it can be
Speaker 1: super delicious, and it's an animal that has a fairly
Speaker 1: large carbon footprint. So if you could find a way
Speaker 1: to produce that meat without you know, having to have
Speaker 1: the end of the same environmental impact, then that would
Speaker 1: that would make a lot of sense. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: at first I was thinking, I was looking around and
Speaker 1: I wasn't finding anything, and I was like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: the age of the vegetable lamb of tartari coming more
Speaker 1: to fruition is We're just not there yet. But as
Speaker 1: reported by Jennifer Marston on The Spoon, that's thespoon dot Tech,
Speaker 1: which is like a really cool looking like news blog
Speaker 1: about food technologies. According to Marston here in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the Australian cultivated meat company Magic Valley dubbed itself quote
Speaker 1: the world's first cultured lamb company. So they're saying this
Speaker 1: is it. We're going to be the ones that grow
Speaker 1: the sheep. She also writes that while lamb consumption in
Speaker 1: the United States has been down in recent there's still
Speaker 1: a big market for it in many countries, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense for a company like this to to, you know,
Speaker 1: to stake their claim to the lab grown lamb meat
Speaker 1: of the future. Though again I have not actually tried
Speaker 1: any of these cultured or cultivated meats, but I would
Speaker 1: love to have the opportunity to do so. I find
Speaker 1: this research very exciting. I think there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of questions about like where where we'll ultimately get to
Speaker 1: with these technologies, But I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of movement behind them, so I'm excited to
Speaker 1: see where it goes.
Speaker 2: I agree it is very exciting. Oh one one kind
Speaker 2: of wants to be the John Mandeville of the future
Speaker 2: that says, I ate one of the lambs and it
Speaker 2: was delicious, except this lamb was grown in a lab
Speaker 2: instead of inside a gourd.
Speaker 1: Now, one thing I wonder about. Okay, so we see
Speaker 1: that they're already thinking about what are all the exotic
Speaker 1: animals of the natural world that people might wish to
Speaker 1: eat that they normally wouldn't have access to. Will we
Speaker 1: go a step beyond Will we see chimeras emerge, be
Speaker 1: able to buy, say, manticore meat?
Speaker 2: Will you be able to eat dinosaur meat?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I guess you already do. If you eat chicken.
Speaker 1: But it's true people are having their their Dino nuggies
Speaker 1: regularly already. But but yeah, what else is possible Willie
Speaker 1: Mammoth steak?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so somehow I imagine that'd be quite gamy. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Should we wrap up there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and call it for this episode.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's there's a lot we could continue to discuss,
Speaker 1: just in like the related realm of things like the
Speaker 1: Man Drake. But then also we could we could easily
Speaker 1: go back to our previous discussion about plant intelligence, plant
Speaker 1: and memory plant communication and explore this topic more so.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: Would you like to hear more on this matter or
Speaker 1: related matters? Is there a particular direction you would like
Speaker 1: to see us go in? Just ride in and let
Speaker 1: us know. In the meantime, you can listen to other
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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, we have our core
Speaker 1: episodes there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact on Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: on Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most important matters and just focus on
Speaker 1: a weird film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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