The Voynich Ninja

This thread is to keep at a single place results of plant identification work based on image mnemonics approach. Each ID should be discussed in a dedicated thread in the "Imagery" subforum; please limit discussion in this thread to the aggregation issues solely.

For the initial posting, I gathered results that I have documented in my offline notes. They may be some IDs suggested shortly before the
"Coventry event" that I have not noted down, I will scroll through the threads and include them here. Also, the table will be updated as new ID's are proposed and discussed to the satisfactory degree of consensus. The table includes only positions that are not excessively vague or controversial: namely, mnemonic proposals should be well explained and correlating with the plant name and/or usage, and the plant image should be, mnemonic-bearing portions excluded, representative of the actual ID proposed.

LEGEND:

Mnemonics codes: N means "name", U means "usage", R means "reference" (to myths, ancient sources etc.) "Tops" means flowers, stem, leaves collectively.  
References: "Pritzel" means Die Deutschen Volksnamen der Pflanzen by G. Pritzel and G. Jessen. "Pliny" means Natural History by Pliny the Elder. More references will be added as appropriate.
ID authorship: "Finnish biologist" means anonymous Finnish biologist on Stephen Bax's website: stephenbax.net. Other names and aliases are self-explanatory.

Folio number	Proposed ID	Tops mnemonic	Tops mnemonic code	Roots mnemonic	Roots mnemonic code	References and comments	Matching independent IDs
f3r	Aconitum napellus	flowers: hoof, leaves: fish, devils (?)	N	scorpion's tail (?)	R	Pritzel: Moenchkappen, Blaukappenbluemen, Fischerkip, Teufelswurz, English Monkhood; Pliny 27:2: kills scorpions	Steve D
f7v	Pulmonaria officinalis	leaves: dots	N	none	n/a	Pritzel: Fleckenkraut	n/a
f25v	Dracaena	dragon	N	none	n/a	Pritzel: Drachenblut; note however that for the beginning of XV c. the Dracaena image is maybe too realistic	O'Donovan
f33r	Papaver somniferum	leaves: owl	N	sleep/death	U	Pritzel: Eulsatkraut	Finnish biologist
f54r	Carthamus tinctorius	stems: skirts, leaves: cleaning (?) brushes	N	roots: painting (?) brushes	N or U	Pritzel: Baurenrocken, Buerstenkraut; the plant is known to be used for dye production	O'Donovan

Great idea, Anton.

How do you want us to add to the list? As posts to this thread (which would allow space for explanations) or as messages to you (for you to add them at your discretion to the chart).

It seems that some suggestions might need some discussion before posting to the chart (you mentioned the imagery subforum), but how does one decide when the discussion has matured enough to enter a plant into the chart?



Also, do you want only the mnemonic references in this chart, or all the plants?

For example, I am 95% sure You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is Tragopogon, it's drawn very accurately, but I also have alternate IDs and Ellie has also offered an alternative.

And... it doesn't have mnemonic components, it's a naturalistic drawing, similar to viola. Does it belong on the chart? And how does one handle differences of opinion about the ID?


Oh, and one more question (sorry to pepper you with questions but it's only because I think your chart is a good idea), what about plants that look like they MIGHT be mnemonic, but it's hard to tell? This one, for example... the root is reminiscent of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but is that intentional or a coincidence (some plants do have roots like this, usually the ones that grow in wetlands or mud)? Does it belong on the chart if it's hard to establish if it's a mnemonic, or if it looks like a mnemonic, but it's not certain what it is?

(I know some of these things are gray area, dependent on common sense and good judgment, but some rough guidelines might be helpful so we don't just dump a zillion plants on you all at once.) 

Plant identification

1) You call this mnemonics but these are very limited properties of a herbal.  

Some of these Botanical nomenclatures You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are f.e. Plant group. Vegetation Form. Flower specs. Presented form of flowering state. Number of leafs/root. habit and surroundings.  Coloring. Original classification topology. Usage & Medical listings with year/writer etc. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. f.e.)


2) if one would mention the year and source of the suggested name, properties etc., the value of such a list would be increased enormously

3) to link the herbal to today one could mention the herbal and the IPNI from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

4) an even better list would provide also first occurrence of the suggested species or properties and the oldest originating manuscript as laid down by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and Howald-Sigerist 1927.

Hi JKP,

The intention of making this thread has been to eventually confirm or disprove the idea that image mnemonics are the key tool for Voynich plants identification and that the "weird" look of the plants is nothing more than the direct consequence of utilizing mnemonics at the expense of naturalism. Right now, the table embraces less than 5% of Voynich plants and, of course, does not allow us to make generalizing conclusions. The idea is that if the moment comes when that percentage is some tens of percents, then we may be more sure that we're on the right track. And, opposite to that, if the table is stale for a long time after many plants having been investigated from the mnemonics angle, that will indicate that mnemonics is not the key tool, but probably only a supplementary one, with limited significance.

Quote:How do you want us to add to the list? As posts to this thread (which would allow space for explanations) or as messages to you (for you to add them at your discretion to the chart).

This thread I would like to limit to technical/aggregation issues only, otherwise with ~120 Voynich plants out there it will turn into a mess within a month. So it's better to restrict plant-specific discussions to those plants' threads (feel free to create those, if not existing yet). Since I don't read each and every thread, it's better to drop me (or any moderator or editor) a line in PM focusing our attention on threads where wide consensus is observed as to the plant ID.

Quote:Also, do you want only the mnemonic references in this chart, or all the plants?

As explained above, the purpose of the table is to ultimately validate or invalidate the whole mnemonics approach. In this light, two kinds of identified plants can be distinguished: those which do not seem to exhibit any mnemonic (generic/naturalistic shape of flowers, roots etc.), and those which seem to exhibit some mnemonic (like weird shape of the leaves) but that mnemonic lacks satisfactory explanation. For the former category of plants, I would include them into the table (specifying "none" for all mnemonics). For the latter, I would not include them until the mnemonic is explained. When the mnemonic is explained, I would include them as regular entries if the mnemonic corresponds to the plant ID (e.g. it points to the plant name or usage), and as, say, entries highlighted in red colour if the mnemonic does not correspond to the suggested plant ID (which would highlight that something unusual is going here.

Quote:And how does one handle differences of opinion about the ID?

I think that if significant uncertainty is observed as to the plant ID and some components of the image do not "fit" the ID and that is not explained, it's better to abstain from including such plant into the table. For the plants already included, I did not re-read the threads, but I remember that I noted down (to my Excel file) only those plants on which there was general consensus in the thread. Of course, there will never be 100% consensus until we're able to read the text (and the very work of plant identification is ultimately to assist one in demystifying the text), so that's a bit "grey area" as you say, but the cases which are evidently undecided I did not include. For example, I do not include f2v, although we discussed it extensively, but something still did not fit (from the pesrpective of mnemonic and mnemonic-to-ID matching). After all, in the absense of formal criteria, someone must make a subjective decision on whether the plant is included, so if it were I who undertook to manage the table, I will make those decisions (with suggestions from the forum members of course), and I'll try to be careful in that. For doubts, I reflect those with question marks, as in the case of the supposed Dracaena. Any objections and comments (Pritzel errors, counter-suggestions etc.) are of course welcome in plant threads. My disadvantage in this respect is that I'm not a botanist at all (I did not like biology lessons at school  ), so I don't have that quick eye of a botanist allowing them to discern essential from minor in the plant image. If a professional botanist joins our Forum and wishes to join this work, I will happily pass the table to him. Of course, one argument towards including the plant into the table is when the mnemonic-based ID matches one of the previous ID's which were not mnemonics based. For this purpose, the last column of the table is introduced.

Quote:what about plants that look like they MIGHT be mnemonic, but it's hard to tell? This one, for example... the root is reminiscent of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but is that intentional or a coincidence (some plants do have roots like this, usually the ones that grow in wetlands or mud)? Does it belong on the chart if it's hard to establish if it's a mnemonic, or if it looks like a mnemonic, but it's not certain what it is?

As I suggest above, it's better not to include those until and unless the mnemonic is better explained. The size of the table shoudl serve as the evidence of success of the mnemonics approach, and we don't want any false positives here. The stricter the table is filled in, the higher the credibility.

Hi Davidsch,

Quote:1) You call this mnemonics but these are very limited properties of a herbal.  

Some of these Botanical nomenclatures You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are f.e. Plant group. Vegetation Form. Flower specs. Presented form of flowering state. Number of leafs/root. habit and surroundings.  Coloring. Original classification topology. Usage & Medical listings with year/writer etc. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. f.e.)

Sorry if I misunderstand your point, but I would not say that mnemonics are "properties" of a herbal. It is kinda "referent" of a herbal - ultimately of its certain properties, of course, - but themselves they do not always directly point to the   plants' properties. Like that eye of God (if you follow the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread), God knows why so many plants are called "eye of God".

Quote:2) if one would mention the year and source of the suggested name, properties etc., the value of such a list would be increased enormously

3) to link the herbal to today one could mention the herbal and the IPNI from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

4) an even better list would provide also first occurrence of the suggested species or properties and the oldest originating manuscript as laid down by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and Howald-Sigerist 1927.

All good points, especially 2). We discussed it already back in January, when Pritzel broke into the discourse, that folk plant names may be younger than the VMS - and this is something that should be checked. Honestly, this is not an easy task - far harder than scroll through Pritzel (or other similar source) for name matches. I suggest to make this work a separate "pass" - although not necessarily a later one, and this information (expecially when it's shading doubt upon the identification) should be included in the table.

I'll think how to incorporate these elements into the table. Maybe it's better to move it to the Wiki, then any forum member will be able to make input as to plant mentions in manuscripts, plant name history etc. To be honest, I totally forgot about the Wiki when creating this thread yesterday.

I like the idea of a table, but two different things are being discussed here.

On the one hand,  and this is what Davidsch seems to suggest,  it would be very handy to collect a table with proposed plant IDs by various persons. They must be dated because precedence matters.

On the other hand, there is the mnemonic focused proposal by Anton.

I would encourage and support both tables, but suggest to keep them separate. One is a about mnemonics linked to ID's, the other an objective overview of what has been proposed so far. For this type, I bet there are members who have a table already which we could use as a starting point.

I don't think Davidsch means the table of all proposed plant ID's, does he? Anyway, that's not how I interpreted his suggestions in my reply, and the proposed table is for one ID per Voynich plant (based on mnemonics indeed).

Not only plant ID's must have a reference to a person, but also to an originating author/manuscript + date,
but also all other "properties" (to use the exact word again: any "botanical nomenclatures" that you can think of) must have at least 1 reference.
But only one reference is really very poor.

Only with historical and/or originating references, as suggested in my prev. posting, such a list will be useful.

Although some people later referred to d'Imperio's book to suggest that the idea of mnemonics is not new, or that it has connection to the earlier discussions of alchemical herbals, the fact is that it is only thanks to  Don Hoffmann who alone refrained from dismissive noises, that my explanation of mnemonic devices and their presence (introduced in a paper of 2008) finally entered the study.

I'm glad to see what a popular idea it has become, but I think it important to emphasise two things:
1.  that I see no direct connection to the 'Plants of the Alchemists' books at all, but some distant connection to one of the images in the Juliana Anicia codex - that which accompanies text from an early, eastern, Greek author.

2. That I have never used the mnemonic device as a means to identify the subject of any botanical folio.  In my opinion this is a sure road to error.  Rather, having first undertaken the usual  - and sometimes very lengthy - investigations needed to reduce the number of possibilities to a few, the mnemonic serves as a check that the wrong path hasn't been taken.

What emerged as I worked through the botanical folios (sharing only such material online as I thought might help the linguists and cryptographers), is that these mnemonics are not language-dependent.  This is the chief reason that many are legible: they are about the plant(s), not about words for the plant(s).   In this they show a clear divergence from the practices of Latin mnemonic imagery, which is invariably dependent on the shared vocabulary of the original maker and intended users.

The way to identify the plants is by reference to the type of leaf, the petioles and their relative length and form of attachment (opposite or alternate), the habitat and the habit indicated.. these things are in order depicted from the literal to moderately-schematic in most cases.

Flowers do not have the same importance in the manuscript's tradition as they do in ours, and are often denoted by some formal motif (which is the case, for example on f.33v).  

When you have a tentative identification by these means, that's the time to consider the mnemonic to see if, and how, it accords with that identification.  IMO

Quote:Diane: What emerged as I worked through the botanical folios (sharing only such material online as I thought might help the linguists and cryptographers), is that these mnemonics are not language-dependent.

I think that's true of of a great deal of iconic imagery. Whenever we want to bridge language gaps we use pictures. Even sign language is, in a sense "pictures", as we are drawing shapes with our hands. A picture, especially of something like an animal, is frequently not language dependent. Much of heraldry is based on iconic imagery such as animals, birds, swords that were intended to be understood by people of different cultures/languages.


Anyone who has looked through herbal manuscripts and medieval religious tracts has seen many mnemonics and most people familiar with medieval history would recognize them as such.



The hard part is not recognizing that there are mnemonics. The hard part is determining exactly what they mean in a manuscript in which things appear to be at least partly hidden or "secret".

I see no reason to write up the VMS mnemonics until I have something to say about it that's a little more definite than "this is a mnemonic". Some look like lions or dogs or horses, but until one determines which one it is, or what it might mean in relationship to the plant, there's not much motivation to write it up.