The Voynich Ninja

Petasites isn't the only plant on my list for this drawing.

There are some forms of rhubarb that have green stems, rounded leaves with ruffles and tears, and stalks similar to the VMS plant. Some also have roots that are thick and clumpy, some as thick as a fat parsnip.

But... even when you look very closely at the flowers (which are in tight bunches), they aren't shaped like the VMS flowers/fruits (which are similar to some species of groundsel), they are more clumpy and rounded.

I traced the pen lines of the root to show a bit clearer what's going on. It's like two main "wings" or "legs" overlapping, with a hole in the middle. This motif appears to some degree in a number of other plants as well. What sets You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. aside is that its root appears to be the fattest/most bulbous one.

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. root has a little extra something but I can't remember if it ever got discussed on the forum. I know the root with the more obvious hole was talked about, but I'm not sure 52v was mentioned in the same thread.

It might be a good idea to show a closeup of the root drawing in the thread to save us time cross-referencing it on other sites. It's years and years since I've looked at this root close up so I had forgotten about the "crossed-leg" aspect.

(17-01-2018, 11:12 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I traced the pen lines of the root to show a bit clearer what's going on. It's like two main "wings" or "legs" overlapping, with a hole in the middle. This motif appears to some degree in a number of other plants as well. What sets You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. aside is that its root appears to be the fattest/most bulbous one.

Hi Koen,
we discussed similar roots in the context of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In 2016, an example from Firenze Riccardiana 2174 was discussed on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Both manuscripts are Italian, XV Century.

Koen,


The discussion seems to have missed the critical issue - which is not about labels but about the picture.

The medieval herbals have a picture that looks nothing like the banana plant, and as was well pointed out earlier, they present as copies of an initial drawing formed by analogy and based on a verbal description of some sort of 'banana' though which is impossible to discover.  

What we have in f.13 is precisely the opposite.  No legible label yet a picture made so clearly that two persons, independently identified it as one (sherwood) or more (O'Donovan) of the type of plants we call the 'banana' or 'Musaceae' family.  Naturally the world didn't sit about waiting for Latin nomenclature before realising that blood bananas and others of the family looked like one another.  Intelligence and observation wasn't the preserve of European medieval males.


The significance of the drawing isn't its identification and the problem for the conservatives isn't really how to make it fit the idea of the botanical folios as an aberrant Latin herbal.

The problem for the conservatives is that the drawing shows close and detailed knowledge of both the plant and associated uses and customs, including what I've termed tabus.  

Of course the herbal show a drawing labelled 'Musa' and so forth.  But what we have in f.13r is a plant with no legible label yet which is so clear that two very different approaches, by two very different researchers, not only using entirely different methodology but holding very different opinions about the manuscript itself reached the same point of view about the identification - more or less.

We know there is no drawing of that sort in any medieval herbal and that the form of the living plant  was unknown to the botanist and illustrators and writers of Europe before the sixteenth century.  


That doesn't offer any support at all for the 'all Latin Christian central European author' theory.  Which is why it's a problem for the conservatives, and I daresay we'll have a lot more efforts now to find alternatives which will fit that theory.  Understandable when people tend to identify closely with a theory.

Rene's effort to provide a precis of my findings was very good, but here's the original pair of posts for comparison.  

Part 1 - analysis and commentary

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Part 2 - historical context and inferences.

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I think I may have to add a third post to that pair - at some stage when I have time - because there is a  new fantasy-legend circulating on the interwebs.  

Nicely summarised in 2014 by Harper McAlpine Black  (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), who repeats Edith Sherwood's short commentary and identification - with an illustration before  writing:

... it sure looks like a banana plant to me. This would be interesting, because the banana was cultivated by and was distributed by Muslims. Muslim traders took the plant from South East Asia and introduced it throughout the Muslim world, especially in Africa. But it was growing in Cyprus by the later Middle Ages, and the Italian traveller Capodalista wrote about them in the late 1450s. They were therefore a known plant, albeit exotic and the commercial preserve of the Muslims.


Which is wrong in every line apart from the first sentence.  

(I don't fuss about typos but just as a matter of fact,  'Capodalista' should be Capodilista)

Diane wrote: "Of course the herbal show a drawing labelled 'Musa' and so forth.  But what we have in f.13r is a plant with no legible label yet which is so clear that two very different approaches, by two very different researchers, not only using entirely different methodology but holding very different opinions about the manuscript itself reached the same point of view about the identification - more or less."

I would be cautious of using E. Sherwood's identifications as "confirmation" of one's own IDs.

E. Sherwood had no background in plants and a large proportion of her IDs are questionable and some very obviously wrong.

On the attempted cultivation of banana etc. I'll quote a significant passage from TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS. DIOSCORIDES AND THE ILLUSTRATED HERBAL IN THE ARAB TRADITION by Michael J. Rogers (emphasis mine)

Quote:Abu’l-Khayr was a late-11th-century author who, Carabaza conjectures on the basis of internal evidence, was supervisor of the ‘Royal garden’ of the ruler al-Mu{tamid in 11th-century Seville. His work combines quotation from his predecessors, information from local professionals, and his own personal observation, and although it never appears to have been illustrated it doubtless presupposed illustrated works of other specific types. It seems to go back to a late Antique or Byzantine georgic or geoponic tradition, perhaps to the 6th-century Cassianus Bassus Scholasticus, or perhaps to a certain Qus¢ūs (possibly to a pseudo-Qus¢ūs, {Alī b. Muammad b. Sa{d), who re-worked Cassianus Bassus’s text. Abu’l-Khayr’s soubriquet, al-Shajjār (‘the Tree Man’) indicates that to his contemporaries and successors he was primarily an arboriculturalist, and the detailed account he gives of grafting suggests that he may have been involved in experimental development. He covers, variously, timber-cultivation to olive-growing, grape-growing and fig- growing, orchard trees and garden crops like bananas, and a physic garden, including simples such as the mandrake, thus all gradations from forestry, agriculture and pharmaceutical cultivation to floriculture. The other crops he describes include rice and wheat; vegetables; and garden fl owers, including roses, jasmine, carnations, narcissi, saffron, and irises or lilies of various colours. The text presents, however, a curious problem, that some of the plants and shrubs mentioned could never have been grown in Andalusia and were valued imports from tropical Southern Asia, notably myrobalans (Terminalia spp. Linn., a genus of tropical hardwoods, the fruit of which was used in tanning) and the Nux-Vomica tree (Strychnos Nux-Vomica).

Have you noticed that some of the images in herbals that are labeled "musa" do not resemble banana plants?

I've been doing some research on this, for the following reason...

Before Columbus, Cyclamen was called "earth apple" (one of several names). After the potato was brought to the Old World, it became "earth apple" and the Cyclamen gradually lost the name. I've found a number of plants like this, that take on a more recent name after New World, African, and Asian plants became better known in Europe.


When I tried to find information on medieval "musa" there wasn't much info, but in the Portuguese and Provençal references, there is mention of a plant called "musa" which is what we call mouse-ear (there are several weedy field plants called "mouse ear" due to the downy fuzz on their leaves and sometimes stems). Many field plants have basal leaves and roundish seeds on slender stalks which would match some of the old images.

After that I found another field plant called musa but couldn't quite make out what it was, but it was definitely not banana.

The references are few and hard to find, but it's possible some of the early herbal images of "musa" are not banana and that the name at some point got transferred from something else to banana, just as earth apple was transferred from Cyclamen to potatoes. Unfortunately, if this happened, it's a bit difficult to determine exactly when because so many scribes copied from old references and sometimes misunderstood what they were copying and added their own twist to the interpretation.

During my morning walk...

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