The Voynich Ninja

(22-02-2017, 10:25 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think the overall shape of the leaf is that far different from basil - it's simply that the leaf is drawn flat, whereas basil tends to be more concave in real life.

I spent a great deal of time looking at the plant drawings to see how the illustrator does certain things before I even started identifying them, and I'm pretty confident basil would not be drawn this way.

This plant has a distinctive leaf whorl. Basil does not. The leaves aren't just flattened, they are completely the wrong shape and the veins are wrong. The shapes of  leaves on the other naturalistic plants are quite accurate so why would this one be so far off?

The VMS plant looks like Plantago, Dracaena and, if you draw it before the flower stalk emerges, it also looks like martagon lily (without the flower stalk), Alstroemeria, Veratrum album, or one of the other whorl-leaved parallel-veined plants. Most of these plants are included in medieval herbals.


It isn't enough to look for similarity in one particular plant. You have to go through thousands of herbal illustrations to get a sense of how different medieval plant artists iconified things like flowers, seeds, leaves, etc., and then you have to go through ALL the VMS plant drawings and get used to how certain things are done so you can distinguish between a vine and a ground cover, between a shrub and a flower. Just as the necks and faces and eyes on the nymphs are done a certain way, so are the plants, and except for a few that more are stylized than others, they are quite consistent and pretty accurate, more accurate than many plant books of the time.

I'm pretty sure basil would be drawn from the side, not from the top. The VMS follows tradition in the sense that some of the whorled plants are drawn from the top, the ones in which the whorls are particularly distinctive, such as this one and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Plant You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not basil, but it's closer than 25v. Basil is an upright bushy plant (the leaves are pretty close together, but they are not concentrated on the bottom like plantain or on the stem like Dracaena).


If you consider that Dracaena means dragon and the critter by 25v resembles a dragon and the plant resembles Dracaena, it's a much more likely ID than basil. Since we don't know the critter's significance, then Plantago and the others should be on the list, as well.


P.S., technically Dracaena doesn't have parallel veins, but it looks like it does because the leaves are very long and the veins are almost parallel along the outer end of the leaf, so it's probably close enough.

Plantain leaves (Plantago lanceolata) look like this and they form a round whorl on the ground (left and middle). Compare the veins to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Dracaena looks like this (right):

 

Images courtesy of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the University of Massachusetts, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[url=https://newfs.s3.amazonaws.com/taxon-images-1000s1000/Plantaginaceae/plantago-lanceolata-le-ahaines-b.jpg][/url].

As always, everything is possible and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be Basil. No plant identification can be certain, until we read the text.

My personal opinion is that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a better match for Plantago, as proposed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and many others. In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I attached a trivial parallel with several manuscript illustrations of Plantago. 

Basically, what the illustrations have in common, are lanceolate pointed leaves with parallel veins, while basil has globular ovate leaves with palmate venation.
The dragon / basilisk / dog / sheep is not terribly informative per se.
A Plantago with critter can be seen in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think the basilisk is much more common in illustrations of Basil.

Apparently, in the manuscript tradition, both Plantago and Basil were always represented in side-view. The top-view of Voynich You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. doesn't match any of the two candidates.

My feeling about the VMS whorl being top-view is the same way I feel about several of the other plant drawings in the VMS that diverge (somewhat) from tradition while still retaining some of the traditions... I suspect it's because the illustrator looked at real plants (I have specific reasons for believing this).

When you walk around, Plantago is one of the most distinctive and common whorled plants, as the leaves come out before the flower shoots. It's also one of the most distinctive in terms of the parallel veins.


If one is creating an herbal manuscript intended for reference and identification, it makes sense to include the flower shoots (from the side) because they are one of the most important things (besides the parallel veins and whorl) that distinguishes Plantago from other whorled plants (whorled plants are widespread and are so similar that some are hard to identify before the flower stalks emerge).

But... being a somewhat coy and mysterious manuscript, it would make complete sense for a VMS representation of Plantago or Dracaena (or whatever this plant happens to be) to show enough to identify the veins and whorl and something as a mnemonic, which means it wouldn't have to be drawn from the side to show the flower shoots in order for the creator to know what it is.

-JKP-
The constant efforts to represent this imagery as just a nice, ordinary European herbal that is putting on a funny but flimsy mask are a waste of time.

No-one with any competence in provenancing imagery is going to accept that vast discrepancy in stylistics as just a bit quirky.  It's a substantial indication of different origins.

You look at all those examples produced as supposed comparisons and this is what stands out.  The Latin herbal images are stiff, inaccurate efforts to make a single plant 'portrait'.  The Vms images aren't stiff; we've known for more than half a century that they don't represent single plant 'portraits' and they sure as anything aren't inaccurate. 

The argument about it being a nice, normal, Christian European herbal of that sort, just "seeming" strange is immediately disproven by the banana-group's being included, and pictured in a way that shows first-hand knowledge of that group AND of its uses beyond the Mediterrean.  And history tells us - as the history of the herbals and Tacuinum imagery prove - that knowledge of these plants' actual appearance [not rough schematised images] remained unknown there for about two centuries after the Vms was made

The same is true for other plants, and even some from the Dioscoridan corpus. Well represented in Beinecke MS 408, though as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, westerners were still trying to find what the plant looked like.

The VMS isn't a nice, familiar, ordinary sort of Latin work whose presentation "seems" odd.  It really is alien to that tradition. Obviously and blatantly. Style is not Latin save some of the late additions; script is not Latin European though the hand(s) could be; the language doesn't act like a Latin European work, and there's no way that a competent art appraiser would accept the comparison between the way the plant is pictured on f.25v and those presented above. 

The problem is methodology.  If the aim is to ascertain the origins and provenance of the imagery, then one has to first look carefully at the primary evidence, and seek close comparative examples.

If the aim is only to produce an impression that the work is, say, from north Africa, then the only examples shown will be from North African herbals... or German... or Syrian.. or whatever.

But the second is a methodology so flawed as a means for provenancing that such arguments can only survive within the 'Voynichero' environment; they wouldn't last ten minutes in the wider world of art history or even commercial appraisals.

Folio 25v, as has long been known, represents the Dracaena spp. 

The particular plant shown to define the GROUP referenced here is (as we see from habitat, bark, and leaves) inot the Mediterranean plant which has been called (only for the past 150 yrs) D. draco.  It is rather  the Soqotran plant which has neither fruit nor flowers and which is now given the taxonomic description D.cinnabaris.  It was known to the classical Mediterranean as 'Indian dragonsblood' and in fact both the modern descriptions are derived from the same passage from a classical Latin author.

Understanding imagery created from another time - requires a lot more work that most people imagine: opinions have to concur with the wider corpus of historical, literary, scientific and linguistic materials.  Otherwise it's just a game of 'Go fish lite'.

This is what the image-maker had in mind. The broad, soft looking leaves which are also characteristic of early growth in D.cinnabaris. Minim was obtained from Dracaenas other than D.draco and D.cinnabaris, and another group (the variegated type) is imo pictured on f.3r.  I've posited that 3r's base type is the plant known as D.javaensis, but colleagues have argued that Dracaena Marginata, the Madagascan dragontree is more likely, given the historical records of trade in 'dragonsblood' resin to the Mediterranean.

(25-02-2017, 12:13 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-JKP-
The constant efforts to represent this imagery as just a nice, ordinary European herbal that is putting on a funny but flimsy mask are a waste of time.

Diane, this has to stop.

You are COMPLETELY mischaracterizing my posts. In my identifications, I constantly cite North American, Asian, and African plants. Sometimes even South American plants.

How many times did I mention Dracaena? It's primarily an African plant and I have mentioned it in almost every post, including the ones that disappeared in the earlier thread.


For you to continually imply that those of us offering plant IDs are trying to characterize this as a European herbal is wrong. In this thread, we are posting plausible identifications, not theories. Basil, which was suggested by David, originated in Africa. Marco is quite right to keep Plantain on the table, and there's no harm in posting European examples. Plantain grows everywhere, all over the world, and is one of the oldest "plants of interest" (for fodder and medicinal and magical purposes) on the planet, and the VMS leaves LOOK exactly like plantain.

He has every right to offer this ubiquitous plant as a suggested ID, and you are out of line if you say he or I or anyone on this thread  is promoting a "European theory" just because Marco includes some interesting pictures from available herbals that happen to be European in origin. They are useful references regardless of where the plants originated, and regardless of the original intent of the plant drawings.


You keep criticizing things that are not being said or even implied.

And even if there are people who believe in a central European origin or that it is an herbal, that is THEIR RIGHT, just as it is your right to believe otherwise, but this thread is not about this being a European herbal and I haven't seen anyone saying that it is. It's about relevant plant IDs and Dracaena was already mentioned by a number of people and Plantago, a Eurasian plant, is a very defendable option.


If you want to discuss central European and herbal politics, start a thread in an appropriate section. This thread is for plant IDs and discussions of plant IDs, not for political discussions of other people's choices of plant IDs.

Diane wrote:

JKP
...The Vms images aren't stiff; we've known for more than half a century that they don't represent single plant 'portraits' and they sure as anything aren't inaccurate.

I've never said they are inaccurate. Quite the opposite—inaccurate plant drawings don't interest me. Also, no one has proven that they don't represent single plant 'portraits'. It is possible that some are composites, but that is conjecture. Nothing about the plant IDs is proven.


...script is not Latin European though the hand(s) could be; the language doesn't act like a Latin European work, and there's no way that a competent art appraiser would accept the comparison between the way the plant is pictured on f.25v and those presented above.

The script (the character set) is based on Latin (and a few on Greek), including the benched gallows. I can prove this—unfortunately, a heavy work schedule keeps interfering with my attempts to write it up. I have thousands of examples and I am slowly getting them in order.

No, the language doesn't act like European languages—on this we agree, though possibly for different reasons.



Folio 25v, as has long been known, represents the Dracaena spp.

No plant ID is proven. Some are more likely than others, but you cannot prove this is Dracaena. Dracaena is high on my list, but I have about five potential plants high on the list and I am quite certain that I have more plant knowledge than you. I have catalogued more than 21,000 plants.


Understanding imagery created from another time - requires a lot more work that most people imagine: ...

You say this and yet you criticize Marco for extensively studying medieval herbals and posting examples.

For the record, I've also gone through all the images for every Arabic and western herbal manuscript available on the Net. I've looked at them so often, I can identify about 75% of the plants without looking at the labels, even if it's a newly digitized herbal that I've never seen before, even if the pictures are badly drawn. I made a concerted effort to learn not only illustrative iconography, but also plant iconography from the middle ages.

-JKP-
You are absolutely in the right. I shouldn't have addressed it to you. The comment was a frustrated response to a general problem - that we can't advance in this side of the research because as soon as something is established reasonably well, it's tossed aside when it doesn't agree with some theory. I was wrong to address the comment to you, and it's perfectly understandable that you took it as a personal criticism.  I apologise sincerely.

The thing is that Tiltman's group surveyed the whole of the not-terribly-large corpus of Latin herbals and said - rightly - that the Vms imagery found no substantial echo there.  The subsequent sixty years haven't seen that change.  Tiltman - individually or on behalf of that group and its years of work and consultation with acknowledged experts such as Sprague  - also recognised, even if a little dimly, that there were composite images here.  He still supposed it an authored work, rather than a transmitted one, so supposed the composite figures partly real, partly imaginary.

But that's just background, explaining the frustration I feel after donating so much time and research to what I hoped would be an advancing study.  Not your fault and not your problem. Apologies again.

Just returning to this topic after being away.
JKP, you have far more plant knowledge that I so I'm not going to quibble with your assertions. As I said before, the veins on the leaves did make me pause for thought when proposing the basil identification. My ID was mainly based on the symbolism of the beast: basil / basilisk.

If we base the Dracaena ID on symbolism then there are some issues there, which are worth going into for the background. I'm assuming most of us know the need to be careful when making the link between name and beast, but let's go through it again.

The first is that, as Diane points out, the name was given to the genus only within the last two centuries - Dracaena Marginata for example was designated as such by Lamarck in 1786, and that was one of the earlier ones to be given the name. The name Dracaena means female dragon from the Greek, and came from the nickname of "Dragon Trees" because they produce a resin which is known as "dragon's blood". Not all members of the genus produce dragon's blood. The blood is the important thing we're concentrating on, as it was used in alchemy and medicine since Roman times. The plant names worked backwards from the dragon's blood resin.

So to link the symbolism of the beast with the plant we need to limit our analysis to a medieval interpretation - we need to narrow our search to those plants that would have been associated with the production of dragon's blood. For the purposes of this discussion we will assume that the VM scribe knew dragon's blood came from trees.

Dragon's blood is a red resin which is produced by certain plants (listed below). In antiquity, it was not recognised by the Romans as being a resin and was lumped in with certain minerals. By the late middle ages it was generally recognised as coming from different trees including (wikipedia here) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Of these, only Dracaena looks anything like the VM plant.

Incidentally, I came across a Spanish account of the naming of Dragon Trees (dracaena). The myth, which appears to have been mentioned in Spanish sources when they were colonising the Canary Islands in the late 15th century, is that when Hercules killed Landon the multi headed dragon, from his blood sprang up multi-headed trees that were known as Dragon Trees. When they in turn were cut, they wept the blood of Landon (dragon's blood). Hence the symbology.

The antiquity of the plant's mythology is testified by their Spanish name which is still in use - the Canary trees are called Sangre de Drago, or Drago de Canarias. The word drago is an antiquated version of dragón , it fell out of use by the 1500's according the Spanish Corpus.

As I said above, dragon's blood is a resin that only comes from a few trees/plants. We moderns have extended the genus to several hundred types of plants, but there are only a very few plants that actually give dragon's blood, and would have been associated in the mind of the high middle ages botanist. In turn, there is only a subset which actually look like the plant depicted.

Now, I am less interested in the plant ID than I am in using it as a crib into the mindset of the scribe, which in turn may help in deciphering the text.

So, we can either ID the plant by symbolism (looking for a plant associated with a critter that looks like the one on the page) or by ignoring the beast and going for a basic plant ID. Let's sum up what we have:

Basil: Creature: of basil / Basilisk (as explained in my original post) Visual match:  Not great Geographical area: Anywhere
Plantago: Creature: no link that I can think of Visual match: Quite good Geographical area: Anywhere
Dragon's Blood trees: From Wikipedia, a list of sources of dragon's blood, and I've struck through the ones that don't look anything like our VM plant.

• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
• Croton draconoides Müll. Arg.
  
• Croton draco Schltdl. & Cham.
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Müll. Arg.
  
• Croton erythrochilus Müll. Arg.
  
• Croton palanostigma Klotzsch
  
• Croton perspeciosus Croizat
  
• Croton rimbachii Croizat
  
• Croton sampatik Müll. Arg.
  
• Croton urucurana Baill.
  
• Croton xalapensis Kunth
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Blume
  
• Daemonorops didymophylla Becc.
  
• Daemonorops micranthus Becc.
  
• Daemonorops motleyi Becc.
  
• Daemonorops rubra (Reinw. ex Blume) Mart.
  
• Daemonorops propinquus Becc.
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Balf.f.
  
• Dracaena cochinchinensis Hort. ex Baker
  
• You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (L.) L.
  
• Pterocarpus officinalis Jacq.
  

So we have narrowed our search to five plants. Any more?

Another example of Plantago with critters can be seen in the 1481 printed Pseudo-Apuleius. In this case, the animals are a scorpion and a snake.

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When I saw the scorpion and snake next to Plantago, I expected the text to say the plant was good for snake or scorpion bites, but it doesn't. It mentions the root for neck pain and the juice for stomach pain/swelling.

I wonder if the snake and scorpion were supposed to be understood without words or if the creators took ideas from different herbals and combined them without much critical evaluation. When printing presses became commercially viable, there was a great push to print almost anything because it was new market, a way to make money.


Haha! I just checked the following page and there it is... ad morsum serpentis. So, the critters are directly related to the use of the plant.

In medieval herbals, many, many plants are "prescribed" for snake bite or dog bite.