The Voynich Ninja

I was looking through the folios of the herbology section and I happened to stop on folio 4. This page shows a very large drawing of a leaf and a slightly smaller white flower. 
I feel that this flower might possibly be the flower and leaf of the waterlilly flower. The waterlillies most famous feature is the huge horseshoe shapped leaf. The leaf on folio 4 is almost definatly a horse shoe shape. Not only this but the white flower quite closly represents a waterlilly flower. 
There is a faint pattern at the bottom of the page, that at first I had not noticed. I think that after looking a couple of times that this, if my waterlilly theory is correct is possibley the soil at the bottom of a pond or river, and to which the lilly is connected.
Can you please give me your veiws on this theory? I dont know if this means anything.
Caitlin

Hi Caitlin

This is one of the most recognizable and least controversial plants in the MS. We have had several threads about it.

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Based on the uses in medicine, and how often it appears in books, it is not the water lily, but the hazel root ( Asarum europaeum )
Little entry in english Wiki, more in german

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When you look through the other threads, you'll see that I think it's Villarsia/Menyanthes (the reason I always combine these is because the two are so similar they used to think they were the same and a person in the 15th century would not be able to tell the difference without a microscope). Nymphoides.


The flower is wrong for Asarum  (they have short, stubby, hard, jug-like brownish flowers near the base of the stalk), and... most medieval illustrators managed to draw Asarum correctly enough to distinguish it from others.

Asarum is on my list of possibilities for this plant, so I'm not discounting the possibility, but Villarsia fits it better in terms of proportions and features (especially the rhizome and leaf). A lot of people resisted Villarsia/Nymphoides when I first suggested it (some still disagree with it), but I think it's a strong contender.


Nymphoides comes in white and yellow, fringed and unfringed, and the leaf varies from arrow-shaped to kidney-shaped. It grows all over the world in moderate to warmer climates. Sometimes it has a little "shelf" at the base of the calyx.


Here are examples of several different species of Villarsia. The ones that grow in the New World are almost identical to those from the Old Word:

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People frequently ask me if Villarsia is included in medieval herbals (usually the ones who disagree with Villarsia and think it's one of the bigger more familiar water lilies). The answer is yes, Villarsia is in several of them. It is sometimes labeled Nymphoides and sometimes Villarsia. It was usually drawn with white or yellow flowers.

This was the drawing that drew me to the VMS. The root is very well drawn.

The Villarsia / Menyanthes is out of question for me because of the place of origin and the time around 1400.
But I think you mean the European sea-can (Nymphoides peltata).
But also this one is not classical.

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It would seem the root and the leaf indicate a hardy water lily, not a tropical one.

Aga Tentakulus Wrote:The Villarsia / Menyanthes is out of question for me because of the place of origin and the time around 1400.

But I think you mean the European sea-can (Nymphoides peltata).
But also this one is not classical.

I think Nymphoides peltata (synonym: [font=sans-serif]Villarsia nymphaeoides[/font]) is the most likely species but I prefer to say Nymphoides because you cannot tell some of the individual Nymphoides species apart without a microscope. The color can vary, the leaf shape can vary, the fringe can vary from absent to fuzzy, even on examples from the same species. The one that is native to North America looks exactly like the one that is native to India (botanists used to think it was the same species).

N. peltata is native to most of Europe (but now also grows in east Asia, North America, and Africa).



I forgot to mention, the pistil sometimes sticks up above the petals of the flower (not usually, but some variants do this—I posted examples on the other threads). And yes, it is in medieval manuscripts under the names of Nymphoides and Villarsia (same drawing, different name in different regions). I think I posted at least one example.

Basically I try to stick to the classical medicinal plants of the region.

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I try not to assume too much.   :-)

The species of Viola that is in the VMS was not considered to have very much medical benefit. Most of the time, they preferred Viola odorata, which has heart-shaped leaves, not palmate leaves. Tragopogon was also not considered to have much medical benefit. It shows up occasionally in medieval herbals but most of them did not include it.

In other words, the purpose of the VMS plants might not be medical. It might be something else (that doesn't mean it can't include medical plants, but those might be a subset of the overall VMS plan).

I agree, not necessarily medicinal. I think they could be meant to indicate fast growing edibles that would also keep soil from eroding after a catastrophic flood or other event which might affect the food supply. Recently, three locust plagues in three different countries came across my feeds, that would also qualify. 

I was thinking about Viola arvensis, it is similar to Viola tricolor but is larger, has more seeds, larger sepals, and lighter coloration. The latter two attributes seem to match the vms viola. I once had a Viola tricolor or arvensis growing near my house, don't know for sure which species, gave it some fertilizer and it grew really long, and lasted through the winter, under the snow, in fact the entire plant stayed green the whole time as well and then continued to grow the next year (they are supposed to be annuals, we are in zone 4) They grew really long, about two feet, kind of sprawled around. Maybe hardy hybrids are involved. I do prefer the taste of our local V. tricolor, has a wintergreeny aspect absent in the other violas that grow nearby (heart shaped leaves).

There are so many violas, and so many waterlilies. They might be indicating groups of plants, especially since they probably did consider many that we currently differentiate to be the same, and or there might not have been as many varieties in the past.

I agree the flower of the waterlily seems most to resemble Nymphoides. But when i see the rhizomes they are generally of the tropical banana type, or just tangled roots. The rhizome drawn seems more like Nymphaea



Maybe they saw the Nymphoides flower, dug up a nearby rhizome with a similar leaf, not realizing it was a Nymphaea that hadn't bloomed yet or had already bloomed.

Similar with the Viola, some of the flowers are drawn all blue, which is more like other types that do not have leaves like the ones drawn.