The Voynich Ninja

(25-11-2025, 08:41 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(25-11-2025, 08:20 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, I think so. The name is usually just given as 'Viola'.

Viola odorata is the common violet.  Viola tricolor is the pansy (forget-me-not).

Viola odorata (or at least the current garden variety) usually grows in compact clusters of roundish leaves,close to the ground.  Viola tricolor grows taller and has elongated leaves, with one sharpish point near the ground and multiple sharpish points higher up.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is almost surely Viola tricolor, because of the shape of the leaves and flowers.  Except that the flowers are upside-down...

The scientific name Viola was taken from the common name "violet" or "viola" for the odorata species.  I don't think that common name was ever used for any other species, including tricolor. Only modern botanists know that the pansy is a Viola too.

Let's look at this a bit more. 

One difference between the viola illustrations in the Tractatus de Herbis and in the Voynich MS is that the former has the name 'viola' written near them, while in the Voynich MS we don't have this (yet).

I do not know whether the text in the Tractatus provides further details about which particular type of viola is meant. It may well do that, and maybe someone can say something about that. 

However, the second largest difference is in the shapes of the leaves. So I agree that the ones in Tractatus look more like those of viola odorata and the ones in the Voynich MS look more like viola tricolor.

There is a third aspect, which is related to the colours. Here, I think we have good reason to be very cautious. Without having to assume that the colours were added much later by someone who did not know what to use, it is clear that the colour palette is very unusual. Most obvious is that there is far too much blue.

It would be a fundamental logical error to say on the one hand that colours cannot be relied upon in general, but at the same time, when they happen to match, to say that this match is usable evidence. 
(I hope I phrased that in an understandable way).

This problem is not limited to the colours.

The vast majority of plants in the MS cannot really be identified. Numerous cases have been called either impossible, or rather composites of parts from different plants.

At the same time, I am of the opinion that the person (or persons) who drew the plant outlines, was quite capable of doing this. There are many details that are entirely realistic. It is completely different from the quality of the human figures. I'd like to hear from others how they see this. I'm a bit lazy right now to create many clips of these drawings to make this point clearer, but I might do it later.

This is a bit of a contradiction. Someone, who was apparently capable of drawing plants, did not manage to draw many realistic plants. 

One possible explanation for this is that he was working from written descriptions. He put the plants together from elements he had seen. (Again, I can refer to the description of 'Musa' - the banana plant - in the Tractatus de Herbis, which is wrong, and was created in exactly this manner). 

However, there can be other explanations, for example that they were never intended to represent real plants. The whole book may have been a medieval hoax.

Regardless of this uncertainty, the same problem remains. The majority of plants cannot be positively identified, so when there is an occasional good match, how can we use this good match as evidence? 

While I don't want to ignore the medieval hoax option, I find the case of drawings from written descriptions more interesting. In that case, the 'artist' could well have seen the word viola in the text, and drew the type of viola he had seen in the field.

The important question Jorge raises here is if a medieval artist would have used the term Viola for V. tricolor. In German this is a 'Stiefmütterchen' while V. odorata is a Veilchen. A known medieval German term for V. tricolor was freisam in different spelling variants or yacea (?) in latin
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German Wikipedia says that the Fathers of Botany (Otto Brunfels, Hieronymus Bock, Leonhart Fuchs) could not determine which species the viola (Ion) in Dioscorides was supposed to be. 

More on the odorata / tricolor distinction which seems quite a mess over the centuries:
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(26-11-2025, 12:50 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do not know whether the text in the Tractatus provides further details about which particular type of viola is meant.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.  Viola (with no qualifier) was since antiquity the common Latin name for the odorata species only (and maybe for other species that could be confused with it, or for any small purple flower in general).   The derivatives of that word are still used in the same way (with no qualifiers)  in English and most Romance: "violetta" in Italian, "violette" in French, "violeta" in Spanish and Portuguese... 

I don't think anyone would have used "viola" for the pansy in the Middle Ages, since the plants, leaves, and flowers are quite different.    That happened only in the 1600s-1700 after Linné invented the binomial name system, and used Viola for the name of the genus that was defined as comprising both species (and others).

All the best, --stolfi

(26-11-2025, 12:50 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would be a fundamental logical error to say on the one hand that colours cannot be relied upon in general, but at the same time, when they happen to match, to say that this match is usable evidence

I for one am satisfied that the colors were picked arbitrarily by the Painter, without knowing or caring about the actual colors of the actual plant being depicted.  It is sad to see how many hours and keystrokes have been wasted because of the assumption that the colors carry any useful information.

All the best, --stolfi

(26-11-2025, 02:07 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.German Wikipedia says that the Fathers of Botany (Otto Brunfels, Hieronymus Bock, Leonhart Fuchs) could not determine which species the viola (Ion) in Dioscorides was supposed to be. 

To put things in perspective, the genus Viola is quite complicated. There are about ~40 different species of Viola in Italy alone and they are difficult to classify (personal experience). There are basically two groups (morphologically, at least):'odorata'-like violas and 'tricolor'-like violas.

'Odorata' violas have flowers with only two petals pointing upwards and 2 more pointing sub-horizontally (the last one points downwards), while 'tricolor' flowers have four petals pointing upwards (and the last one points downwards as before). 'Odorata' often flower in early spring (or even earlier, depending on altitude), 'tricolors' flower later.

'Odorata' flowers are smaller and violet to blue to white (they can have different colours even in the same species), 'tricolor' flowers are more colorful, with many yellow and pink species. However, the flowers are mostly monochromatic, with the exception of Viola tricolor and possibly Viola calcarata which can have yellow at the center of the flowers too (it can also have completely yellow flowers... in general, the colour of the flowers is a poor diagnostic tool for the genus Viola).

Violas are quite common, including Viola tricolor, and are well-known to people (Viola tricolor is called 'viola del pensiero', but I'm sure this is a late term). Distinguishing at glance an 'odorata' from a 'tricolor' is very easy (and the VMS 'viola' surely resembles a real Viola tricolor a lot), but anything beyond that requires some botanical knowledge, and it's a difficult task already on real specimens, and worse on drawings.

Sorry for not posting references, but they come from books (Pietro Zangheri, Flora Italica; David Aeschimann et al., Flora Alpina), and some from memory.

Don't get me started on Viola taxonomy, it's a nightmare! 

However, regarding the VM plant, regardless of color, there are only 2 closely related species (disregarding subspecies) that look similar:
V. arvensis
V. tricolor

If the VM text accompanying the drawing is indeed related to those, another Viola similar to odorata due to the author's mistake, or something completely different - we don't know.

The Dioscorides text itself is quite vague about the characteristics of the plant Ion, but it's more likely something related to V. odorata:

Quote:Ion has a leaf smaller than cissus [2-210], thinner and darker; and little stalks in the midst (from the root) on which is a little flower, very sweet, of a purple. It grows in shady rough places. It is cooling, so that the leaves (applied by themselves or with polenta) help a burning stomach, inflammation of the eyes, and prolapse of the perineum. A decoction of the purple part of the flower (taken as a drink with water) helps the synanchic [abscessed throat], and epilepsy of children. It is also called dasypodion, priapeion, wild violet, or cybelion; the Romans call it setialis, some, muraria, or viola purpurea.

(26-11-2025, 02:50 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Don't get me started on Viola taxonomy, it's a nightmare! 

However, regarding the VM plant, regardless of color, there are only 2 closely related species (disregarding subspecies) that look similar:
V. arvensis
V. tricolor

Potentially dumb question from the botanically challenged peanut gallery: Difficulties of the illustrations aside, how sensitive were people circa 1400 to this taxonomy? I understand the medievals could be quite sophisticated herbalists, but would they have carved up the space of plants this way?

Not dumb at all and more a question of phytochemistry than taxonomy.
If 2 similar looking plants have a similar effect (or at least no detrimental one), there's no point in distinguishing them. Think about mushroom hunting. If there's a highly similar deadly poisonous one, you gotta learn how to avoid it. If similar species look and taste similar, who cares?

I'm not aware of differences in biochemistry between V. arvensis and tricolor, arvensis is sometimes treated as a subspecies of tricolor The whole thing is an extremely difficult species complex. So honestly I have no idea. I'm not a pharmacologist. But both were used in folk medicine so I don't believe there was much of a distinction.

Another interesting aspect to keep in mind I have previously talked about is the general role of illustrations in herbals. Most of the lavishly illustrated books that survived until this day were produced as luxury items for nobility, not as handbooks for physicians - who could never afford something like this. Poor man's herbals were likely unillustrated, as was the original Dioscorides. One simple reason was because the physicians that prescribed drugs did not go out and collect the ingredients. This was seen as an inferior job - mostly for women. Those were the ones who held the botanical knowledge of local plants. But were not necessarily literate. So there was a gap between the audience of herbals and the people who collected the plants. Hence the quality and accuracy of illustrations was not a top priority.

We only have the VM image to go by, and we could compare it to either visual or textual references. A textual description resulting in this drawing seems unlikely to me. And we're struggling to find comparable images. As far as I'm aware, we can only find "viola" illustrated as something like V. odorata, while the VM depicts something closer to V. tricolor. See this thread: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This is remarkable, and various things could be concluded from it, depending on one's inclinations.

• Is there an unknown or lost herbal tradition where the (presumably inexperienced) VM artist drew the tricolor-shaped flower from?
  
• Have we not looked well enough, or been looking at the wrong kinds of sources? 
  
• Is it a coincidence? They started from one source drawing and by some circumstance drew something we recognize as V. tricolor? Remember that the flowers are upside down. However, some of the details are pretty good, like the line pattern on the inside. I don't think this scenario is particularly likely.
  
• Is it proof of an "old parchment" scenario? Viola tricolor drawings do occur later (ca. 1500+) in books of hours for example. But there, they are executed much better than this thing, and the style is much less schematic, more lifelike.
  
• Is it proof that the VM artist(s) drew from nature sometimes? 
  

(26-11-2025, 05:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• Remember that the flowers are upside down.
  

Aren't they only upside down because the VM shows them in a weird straight up way? Most depictions show the stem bent over to face the viewer (as we see them naturally), if you straightened it out flat then it would be the right depiction I think, it would be 3 top and 2 bottom with the stem in the middle

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