The Voynich Ninja

Now that it's later in the day and I can use some brain cycles for the VMS, I had a thought that "ainper" could occur independently of a copying error...

In modern German, berry is beere from Old High German beri. In Danish, it's bær, from Old Norse ber.

In parts of Germany they substituted "ain" for "ein" (one) and, for some words, "p" for "b"... which could result in "ainper" for one-berry (Paris quadrifolia).


So maybe Auslasser was miscopied or maybe some regions used ainper through natural linguistic evolution (maybe both these things happened), but even after realizing this and looking at it again, I think the Auslasser transcription is Imper chrawt (Imbeer-kraut). It may seem like a small thing and not worth haggling about, but I learned a few things while trying to reconcile the different interpretations.

In the description of "Nymphaea alba" ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) I can not read the first letter. Can someone read it ?

It's N for Newfare wasser pluem (Nuphar wasser blumen).


But you have to be careful because they used the names Nenuphar, Nuphar, and Nymphaea rather interchangeably... give me two minutes and I'll look up the actual ID for this plant. I've gone through the herbals in detail and worked out the plant IDs (and the handwriting) for most of them.

Back in a few...

....
Back... this is more than likely Nymphaea pygmaea but given the way they fudged on flowers and sometimes borrowed flowers from other species, it's also possible it's frogbit (another of the small water lilies), Villarsia. It comes in both white and yellow. The drawing is closer to Nymphaea pygmaea. Villarsia doesn't have as many petals and sometimes has a prominent pistil.