The Voynich Ninja

The important thing about the VMS drawing, and this is what really impresses me about it, is that it shows both stages of growth of the rhizome.

• There is the left side, with rows of spiral leaf scars (with pores showing where the leaf has fallen off)—that's the old growth.
  
• There is the right side. This is the leading side, the new growth. Notice that there are no leaf scars, it is scaly, because this is the part that seeks a new area to grow to and eventually will sprout leaves.
  

It's one of the coolest drawings in the VMS.

1) The thread should be renamed as folio 2v, which it is

2) From the position of the text I suspct we have two plants, Asarum an something else

3) If it is one plant,  Asarum (and from the leaf, I don't know what else it should be) has purple flowers and    the ms. has no purple, but there is a purple colour anotationn somewhere, the white could be misleading

Why does it have to be two plants combined when it is a good match for Nymphoides?

Notice how the VMS drawing not only includes the leaf scars (left) and new-growth scales (right), but also the ragged pattern along the edge of the rhizome:




I'm pretty sure I've posted the following picture in another thread, but here is a closeup of the Nymphoides rhizome.

You can see the old growth... the leaf scars from where each old leaf dropped off. If you look closely, you can see the pores in each scar (little dots on the VMS drawing on the old growth on the left side of the rhizome):

[attachment=3955]

Source: Richards, Dow, and Troxler, American Journal of Botany


Here is a map that shows the native range of Nymphoides (scroll down). It grows in many different climates all over the world (the green color is the native range):

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Dried specimens look like this:

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The bogbean is a cousin to Nymphoides that is also found in medieval manuscripts. The flower is quite similar to Nymphoides (in both real life and in the drawings), but the leaves of the bogbean are thinner and more elliptical. The fish-root in the drawings usually indicates an aquatic plant (bogbean is a marsh plant):

[attachment=3956]

I can't find a Nymphoides with a rhizome like that, much less with flowers that match. i only found the bananas, or stringy roots. However the root is a perfect match for Nymphaea, but then the flowers don't match.


N. aquatica


N. peltata


N. balakrishnanii


N. fallax


N. cordata

I could go on but none have a horizontal rhizome that i can find, much less one that looks like the drawing. 

You say N. peltata seems to match best but it is characterized by red areas on the leaves and as you can see, the leaf margins are not smooth. So I can't agree there.

Ah, you just posted an example. 

Firstly, which is it specifically, because they don't all have rhizomes and those that do seem to have a little vertical taproot-like rhizome at best, usually with a bunch of scraggly roots all around them. 

Secondly, there are no holes in the scars, just one dot each. I am not even sure they are leaf scars, rather it seems like where the roots were cut off the rhizome so you could see it. 

Here is another Nymphaea alba root



The horizontal aspect matches, including the new growth. The scars have holes, as indicated in the vms root.

Linda, Nymphoides is small. People don't photograph the rhizomes, they photograph the bladders because they are more interesting.

The only people interested in the rhizomes are scientists, botanists.

The more familiar water lily rhizomes are huge in comparison, so they are photographed much more often



Here is a link to a botanical article with pics of the Nymphoides rhizome posted above:

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The VMS is small, the details are tiny. Whoever created it was a detail person and would have noticed something like the rhizome on nymphoides if they were genuinely interested in plants, which I believe they were. This is not just a copyist. This was a gardener or a budding medieval botanist.


The VMS flower does not look like a regular water lily. It looks more like Nymphoides. The pistil is prominently displayed in the VMS drawing to show the difference! It also looks like medieval drawings of other flowers from the Menyanthes group.

Note that your specimen examples have no rhizomes to speak of, much less long thick horizontal ones. N. peltata does not even have rhizomes.

I found this "Nymphaea-like" Villarsia. This might do the trick although i would still like to see a good photo of a rhizome of this species as it does not match as well from the drawing.

Villarsia is the old name for Nymphoides. It is still recognized as a synonym.

It is also a family name. When they realized the North American ones that look the same as Old World varieties were actually different species, they started differentiating the family names.


Frogbit (Hydrocharis) is also similar, but it doesn't have the distinctive pistil.

I did say already say that i agree that the flower looks like Nymphoides, but many nymphoides have no rhizomes and the ones that do appear to be vertical with roots attached, not leaves or stolons, these come out the top like a carrot, rather than leaving scars as are indicated by the vms drawing. I am not going by photos alone, descriptions also indicate "lacks a rhizome", or "lacks a large horizontal rhizome" in comparison with those which do, but are not Nymphoides. Also, only a few of the Nymphoides have flowers that match, but these are so far the same species which lack the rhizomes. 

There needs to be a Nymphoides with the correct type of flower, leaf, and rhizome. So far the best i have seen is the last one i posted, but not sure of its current designation, seems like peltata with the flowers and the red on the leaves but all the photos and drawings i have found so far show feathery roots only.

The reason I am reluctant to suggest that the VMS drawings are combination drawings (e.g., regular water lily rhizome with Nymphoides flower) is because then we can't identify any of them. If they are combinations, there's no way to know, without labels, what has been combined with what. We would be stuck, so it should only be a last resort.

Plus, the Viola and Tragopogon and several other plant drawings appear to be individual species, so we know at least some of them are intended to be a specific plant.


If the illustrator confused a water lily root (pulled one out) with Nymphoides flowers that were in the same pond (they do grow together), then we are also stuck. There's no way to account for mistakes without being able to read the text.

Some of the Nymphoides species have rhizomes, so I think locating those should be a first step and anything else... should be another process entirely.