The Voynich Ninja

I havent looked at the plants much lately but today two of them caught my eye. Don't know if similar ids have been made before, if so, i agree. 

Linda, if you look at the second plant (the bottom row f95r ), you will notice that it has berries or fat seedheads at the top and the leaves are odd-pinnate.

In contrast, the nettle plant does not have berries or fat seedheads at the top, it has dangling tassels, delicate ones, at the leaf nodes, and the leaves are not odd-pinnate, they are elliptical attached directly to the stalk in singles.

• The nettle seed shapes, size, and position don't match the VMS drawing.
  
• The nettle leaf arrangement doesn't match the VMS drawing.
  

My suggestion:

Actaea (baneberry, also called Herb Christopher) is a pretty good match for VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It has long tassels of berries that stand up above the leaves and it has odd-pinnate leaves:

[attachment=4563]  [attachment=4564]

Well, i went less with "looks like" and more with what i am thinking of as literal imagery. If i describe the vms plant, it appears to apply literally to the description of the plant i matched it to, even if the drawing is not perfect, with things left out,  different sizing of various parts, and other obfuscations. I realize that saying there are obfuscations can seem like explaining away what doesn't match, but i am convinced it is hiding information in clear sight. 

So for instance for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. what i took as important was

1. Round flowers, berries, and/or seeds, on four racemes, above the leaves. The positions match if you consider the drawing to be 3d and showing four splayed racemes in four directions, although the actual flowers and racemes are much smaller, the racemes more complex than drawn, and the "above the leaves" part is directly above "each" group of leaves in reality, not a single set above "all" groups of leaves as drawn.



2. Leaves mostly opposite, possible compound, with hairs or hooks on the edges. Stinging nettle has this quality of having hairs or hooks, they are the stinging part. Maybe the s shapes signify this? Edges means everywhere, edges from all perspectives. The leaves are generally singular toward the top, only lower leaves are pinnate, but the opposite pinnate drawings almost look like small plants. So the general look as drawn gives both the idea of opposing odd pinnate but also the single opposite perspective of a younger plant.




3. Roots with thick stolons and rhizomes, with thinner rootlets coming from them. I thought it was a pretty good match. 
The first example here also shows what i mean about the young plants being reminiscent of the odd pinnate leaves of an older plant.


4. Stipules (small leaflike appendage to a leaf, typically borne in pairs at the base of the leaf stalk). Drawn in the wrong place on the diagram(at the root), in real life occur at the leaf stalks. Many people consider them the telltale sign they have correctly identified stinging nettle.



Your baneberry suggestion does not address the leaf edgeing, does not explain the lack of showing the toothed nature of the leaves, the raceme is generally singular and erect, the root is dissimilar, and has no stipules but it does seem to have something at the join with the root. Overall though i don't get a sense of the plant from looking at the drawing, whereas i do with the stinging nettle plant, even though the resemblance is piecemeal and sort of time-warpy in seeing young and mature parts at the same time, and zooming in and out at specific parts.



I also hold a hypothesis that the plants drawn in the vms are there as information for the possibility of the food supply being disrupted by flooding or other apocalyptic situations. I see many of the featured plants as being ubiquitous and fast growing, that are easy to propagate, generable edible, or having multiple uses. In this case i would expect to see stinging nettle referenced due to its many uses as food, medicine, and cordage. It is a plant that occured in all three sections of the ecumene. The roots being as they are would make it a good stabilization plant to avoid erosion. As baneberry is poisonous, i see it as a less useful plant in comparison, although i realize it was used as medicine.

It's my opinion, based on looking at the plant drawings year after year, that the naturalistic ones are pretty accurate. The illustrator even paid careful attention to leaf margins.

I'm not sure why you say the VMS drawing doesn't address the leaf edges. It specifically shows them as being serrated. The leaves of baneberry are serrated (some species of Acatea are more serrated than others, but they are all serrated).



If we go with the logic that the drawings are bad, then we can identify the VMS plants as anything we want and one person's argument won't be much better than another. That won't get us very far.

Some of the drawings are mnemonic or stylized, these are harder to identify, but I don't see why we can't do the best we can with those that are naturalistic.

Linda Wrote:I also hold a hypothesis that the plants drawn in the vms are there as information for the possibility of the food supply being disrupted by flooding or other apocalyptic situations.

Basing a plant ID on a hypothesis about its function involves a lot of prior assumptions. You have to demonstrate evidence for those assumptions before the ID becomes valid.


The VMS drawing has very distinctive long, tall tassels of berries that grow upward. Nettle never has this feature. Nettle seeds (of the species you picture) are very small and they hang from the leaf nodes, quite unlike the VMS drawing. There is a species of nettle (Roman nettle) with ball-like seeds, but they do not grow on long upright tassels.

The leaves on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. do not appear serrated, they appear smooth, with the addition of the s designs that may give an impression of serration, which obviously i agree with insofar as the jagged edges of nettle, but it is not there, not even to the extent of nettle, certainly not to the extent of baneberry, so i do not think you can use that as a reason why your doubly serrated hairless leaves are better represented than my serrated leaves with hairs.



You can certainly be of the opinion that they resemble what you think they resemble in a naturalistic way, but as you cannot convince me of the veracity of the resemblance you see, that opinion has as much bearing on the identification to me as my beliefs have to you. 

I did not say they were badly drawn, i simply think they are picking and choosing important traits to highlight rather than drawing a true to life representation of the plant as a whole. Can we agree it would be difficult to present a living plant in exactly the state as drawn without making some modifications to it?

I do not see the naturalistic representation of baneberry that you see. I have addressed the leaf serrations, but in my example above it is groups of three leaves, not five as drawn, so that is problematic as well, if yours can have different presentations then so can my example.  Next, why are there four racemes? I havent yet seen a plant with four coming off a stem, i show one with two, and one with 3, but it is getting crowded, and is not a match, since they are growing off the same stem, and i think, as drawn, not typical re identification of baneberry.  I already mentioned that the roots are not a match either. 

The racemes you see as side by side and curved upward i see as 3d-splayed in 4 directions with a weeping stance, ie curved up, then back down. This does match nettle racemes, even if the complexity has not been fully drawn out. It is the grouping of four which is important to my id, it is not typical for yours. Had they drawn only three, it would not have tweeked as a resemblance to me. But they drew four.



I was, however, mistaken about the stipules, the drawing i was going by had lesser quality that made me see something that i see now is not there, so i will retract my fourth reasoning. 

Nevertheless we will have to disagree because i am not convinced of the baneberry id anymore than you agree with mine. I realize i hold some preconceived notions but everyone does, whether they know it or not, and i dont have to prove they are so to present the ideas. At least i know what they are, and try to express them to show my thinking behind it.

Sorry, Linda, but the folio listed as 95r as the foliator is bound and listed as 95v2 on the Voyage site. It's a foldout. I was confused by that because the "95" is written as per the usual recto in the other parts of the manusript.

I was discussing your second ID—the nettle plant—which you placed next to the plant drawing that is on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . That is the VMS drawing that resembles Actaea, and it has serrated leaf margins. There are even species of Actaea where the outer portion of the serration is more rounded than the inner portion.

It's drawn quickly. Sometimes only one side of the margin is shown, but on some of the edges, you can see both contours from the suggested inner shadow:

[attachment=4570]  [attachment=4571]

The painting is not good, it does not extend out into the points, but the quick sloppy painting is characteristic of many of the plants and may have been done by a different person.


There are numerous species of Actaea, they do not all have three leaves as in the drawing you chose, some have five, just as in the VMS. Note that the botanical drawing of Actaea that I posted also has five, some have seven.

The nettle plant is never odd pinnate. The leaves are singles, attached to the main stem. Actaea is odd-pinnate, regardless of whether it is 3, 5 or 7 leaves.

[attachment=4572]

Actaea berries have a little bump or depression on the end of the berries (depending on the species). Sometimes it is a different color. The VMS illustrator took the time to draw this detail.

Yes it is f95v2 now but it is likely misfolded, so You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might just be more correct, and at least it works to get to the voyager (ie the other doesn't become a link)

Like i said i agree they appear as possibly serrated but you are filling in things that aren't there, regardless, and once filled in, it more matches my serration than yours, which to me is doubly so. How do you explain the lack of deeper serrations as per reality for the baneberry, plus sometimes the bigger leaves even seem to have lobes? That the sloppy paint job hides them? Perhaps you are right and there are no hairs, but there certainly seem to be a lot of s shapes and very little indication that they mean serration and not hairs.

Insofar as nettle not having odd pinnate leaves, they have been characterized as such before, but only near the bottom of mature plants, as drawn, ie below any of the florescences, not at the top nor between the seed racemes. See the german rendition in post 3 comparing a mature plant to a younger one, the latter of which i agree has less resemblance to the plant as drawn, but which does resemble the pinnate leaf bunches if you took them off the stem, ie the older leaves on their own resemble young plants, or the tips of older ones, which fills in the rest of the visualization for me. I agree completely that my version requires a different way of seeing than yours. 

Here is another which shows this feature of what looks like odd pinnate leaves in a mature plant, it doesn't portray the racemes in the way i see as important though.


And yes, one baneberry raceme matches kind of ok visually, if you forget the extra leaf serrations and the fact that the leaves don't often match until you insert one from lower down. If you can do that to make it match, then so can i with mine. But show me one that has four racemes all coming from the same point? And there is still the non matching roots...

I did not add the paint "to make it match". I added the paint because if you look at the painting styles overall, it is clear that the painter (the sloppy one, as there are at least two painters and one was more careful) regularly slapped it on without pushing the paint carefully out into the points. It's not just true of this drawing, it's true of many of the drawings.

I am not trying to "make" the plant match Actaea, I don't CARE which plant it is, I only care about rational explanations.

I am drawing on my knowledge of ALL the VMS plant drawings and the stark difference between the painting and the drawing to make this suggestion. Whoever DREW the plants knew plants and often drew them with greater accuracy than many plant drawings of the time. They're not perfect, but they are pretty good. The painting is not as good. Some of it (the "sloppy painter") is quite bad.

You posted some Renaissance- and modern-era drawings. Here are some medieval drawings.


Medieval Drawings

This is how they drew Urtica (nettle) in the Middle Ages. The delicate tassels are always at the leaf nodes, as they are in real life:

[attachment=4576]


This is how they drew Actaea (baneberry). The leaves are odd-pinnate (like the VMS) and the flower and berry tassels are toward the top of the plant:

[attachment=4577]

The VMS drawing is not consistent with medieval Urtica drawings. It is consistent with medieval Actaea drawings.

[attachment=4585][attachment=4586]
The plants seem to be up to date again.
Here are two possibilities where I take into consideration, but are rarely mentioned.

Aga, I agree with you on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , that's what I have at the top of my list for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (I also have it growing on my patio).

I had something else for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . One idea I had was that it might be balsam, which was drops falling into little urns. If it is, it's stylized and drawn quite differently from other images of balsam, but I think it should be considered.