The Voynich Ninja

I have repeatedly noticed that one plant in Botany is similar to another, and now I have decided to check all the plants for similarities. Here are the features I have discovered:
[attachment=17204]
f19r-f32v
[attachment=17205]
f9v-f23r
[attachment=17206]
f51v-f54v-f94r
[attachment=17207]
f17r-f90v2
(there was an image here)
f17v-f37r-f96v
[attachment=17209]
f18r-f87r
[attachment=17210]
f3v-f24r-f96r

Below, if anything, is my clumsy attempt to depict the general features of the plants mentioned.
As for Herbal B, you can identify not just similarities, but entire families of similar plants. More on this in the next post.

[attachment=17211]
f17v-f37r-f96v
Families in Herbal B:
[attachment=17212]
[attachment=17213]
[attachment=17214]
[attachment=17215]
In the last two cases, the similarity is more in the general form than in the same detail.

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(26-05-2026, 10:56 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is a strange analogy between text and imagery. Both appear to have been cobbled together from a collection of building blocks according to some unknown rules. This is especially true for the VM plants. I agree that at least the majority are composites where roots, stem and flowers have been copied from different sources - and from within the VM. However I think for this reason we can rule out the plants are merely 'shuffled'. The roots were almost certainly copied from another source document than the stem/leaves. The flowers are the weirdest part and appear to be mostly an invention of the VM artist.

But it doesn't stop there. If you look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as well as the weaker correlation between plant drawing styles and scribal hands, you see that each have their own themes and rules, much like the text. And like in the text, there is no 'hard break' between A and B, but no seamless continuum either. Like in the text, some plant themes are repetitive and almost exactly the same plant can be found drawn multiple times, by different scribal hands - or the same.

As with the text, I have no idea if there is some useful information encoded within this imagery, or whether it is meaningless copy-paste. But I believe it shows that both text and plants (and ultimately all imagery) were designed with the same 'mindset'.

(17-08-2026, 10:38 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have repeatedly noticed that one plant in Botany is similar to another .....

Yes, the individual parts of the plants, not just the flowers, show strong similarities to one another. This leads to the assumption that the plants were repeatedly reassembled from their components (roots, stems, flowers) in a sort of modular system. The structure of the plants does not appear to be random, but rather seems to repeat itself. If one were to take the time, one could form groups of similar plants. In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I once compared the plant structures of the VMS with those in the Materia Medica. The similarities are striking. Unfortunately, creating diagrams for all the plants in the “Botany Section” is very laborious. That’s why I haven’t made much progress so far.

I'm working on something but it's not quite where it needs to be yet You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. - select the older crops..

I got a visual model to segment every herbal page . I had tried it with Pharma, but it was very confused... Still, that's the next job...

I found the following example GUI for a plant construction kit on Jérôme's website. It would be interesting to have a functional version of something like this for each plant in the “Botany Section.” The individual plant parts could be simplified schematically so that one diagram would work for multiple plants. The more plants parts that can be grouped together, the better.

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It might be worth comparing this too...
[attachment=17231][attachment=17232]

(17-08-2026, 10:38 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have repeatedly noticed that one plant in Botany is similar to another, and now I have decided to check all the plants for similarities. Here are the features I have discovered:

Yes, similarities for sure. it could be because they drew what they read. Or perhaps they knew what each one looked like but they imposed some sort of rule upon themselves. For that reason I think you are right to group them. 

f19r-f32v when they have the profile you drew, it could be that you are seeing a 3, 4, 5, 6, or more petaled item depending on your point of view and what the flower looks like in other orientations. Also, one has sepals,  the other has a calyx of some sort, so I think you could tell them apart if you could figure out what they are.

f9v-f23r I think there is quite a difference between let's say, Viola and Linum, for instance (just the first symmetrical 5 petal blue flower I could think of) and even between flowers of the same shapes there will likely be differences to tell them apart. 

f51v-f54v-f94r these remind me of clovers, compound. Your drawing is one interpretation, another is that you are seeing petals only along the outside like an aster.  Or it could be filled in, like a dandelion.

f17r-f90v2
(there was an image here)
f17v-f37r-f96v. These remind me of knapweeds, some thistles.

f18r-f87r Number 24 seems to me like the flower on a female gourd of some kind, that is how you can tell if the flower is female, if there is a miniature fruit behind it. The blue one simultaneously makes me think of blueberry and its bell-shaped flower,  and the other, I don't know, but it does call to mind some heavy flowers.

f3v-f24r-f96r

Quote:Below, if anything, is my clumsy attempt to depict the general features of the plants mentioned.
As for Herbal B, you can identify not just similarities, but entire families of similar plants. More on this in the next post.

Re the following post, i can see the commonalities. The first grouping seems like berries, like strawberry spinach.   

Or it could be like the related Chenopodium species where instead of berries it is just seeds.

Candies, I think that is just to add some colour and visual delineation, where otherwise it would seem very flat, I don't think the petals will actually alternate blue and white in real life.

Buds, I think those are small compound flowers like tiny asters and daisies.

The sunflowers have me a bit stumped but the red one might be Celosia of the cockscomb variety.
maybe the others are things like carnations, marigolds, or chrysanthemums; big frilly flowers?

Tubeflowers, I think are racemes or corymbs of tiny flowers. I think the central one might be Tanecetum vulgare, despite the blue colouring. I have one about to bloom, the flowers are actually dark right now, and smaller than they will be.


Anyway, good idea to gather the traits and see what we can make of them. Maybe it will match a text somewhere if we get it right.

(17-08-2026, 09:00 PM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It might be worth comparing this too...

I looked up a plant it reminded me of, and the place that the iconography as I see it reminds me of from quire 13. Turns out that plant and place go together. I know it's not what you are looking for and probably doesn't mean anything, but it was an interesting coincidence.

Linda Wrote:when they have the profile you drew, it could be that you are seeing a 3, 4, 5, 6, or more petaled item depending on your point of view and what the flower looks like in other orientations. Also, one has sepals, the other has a calyx of some sort, so I think you could tell them apart if you could figure out what they are.

In real life, these flowers are naturally distinguishable, no matter what. But in the VMS style, they coincide in an unusual way.

Linda Wrote:f51v-f54v-f94r these remind me of clovers, compound. Your drawing is one interpretation, another is that you are seeing petals only along the outside like an aster. Or it could be filled in, like a dandelion.

This looks like muscari. Like some kind of very large muscari.
[attachment=17240]

Linda Wrote:Anyway, good idea to gather the traits and see what we can make of them.

In any case, I assume that in Herbal A the artist borrowed details from other plants, while in Herbal B they were drawn according to roughly the same scheme.
By the way, in Herbal B, you can distinguish the subfamily of Unilateral ones — f31r, f31v, f46r. Their leaves are arranged only on one side.