08-09-2026, 08:00 PM
Hello everyone,
I'm very much an interested amateur rather than a Voynich researcher, so please forgive me if I'm overlooking an identification that has already been discussed.
I've been looking at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and had a rather strange botanical thought.
The upper structure immediately reads to me as some kind of flower, but I started wondering whether it might instead represent a dried flower or fruit/seed capsule, particularly when the entire plant is considered rather than the reproductive structure in isolation.
I'm South African, and I grew up familiar with vygies (Aizoaceae). Some vygies have thick, spreading/ground-covering foliage and distinctive flowers that, when dried, leave a very different-looking reproductive structure. The visual resemblance between the Voynich drawing and a dried vygie/seed capsule caught my attention.
I am not suggesting that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a vygie. The historical/geographical problem is obvious, and I don't have the botanical expertise to make that claim.
What I'm wondering is something more basic:
Could the apparent “flower” in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. actually be a fruit/seed capsule or post-flowering structure?
And, if so:
Does the structure resemble any known plant family more closely when interpreted as a reproductive structure rather than a flower?
Does the apparently thick/spreading foliage support any particular family or growth habit?
Are there Aizoaceae or unrelated Old World plants with sufficiently similar morphology that the resemblance could be more than superficial?
Has anyone previously compared this particular Voynich illustration with succulent groundcover plants or Aizoaceae?
More generally, how much confidence should we place in the apparent flower/leaf/root morphology when assessing Voynich plants, given the possibility of artistic distortion?
One reason I'm asking is that some Voynich plants seem remarkably convincing while others are, frankly, spectacularly strange. ?
That made me wonder whether we're sometimes judging the botanical accuracy of the whole illustration when perhaps the artist was much more accurate about certain features than others.
So I'm curious what people who have spent far more time with the manuscript see here.
Am I seeing a meaningful botanical resemblance, or have I simply found another excellent example of the human brain being extremely good at finding patterns?
I'd genuinely love to hear the botanists/illustration specialists/long-time Voynich researchers weigh in.
Thank you!
I'm very much an interested amateur rather than a Voynich researcher, so please forgive me if I'm overlooking an identification that has already been discussed.
I've been looking at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and had a rather strange botanical thought.
The upper structure immediately reads to me as some kind of flower, but I started wondering whether it might instead represent a dried flower or fruit/seed capsule, particularly when the entire plant is considered rather than the reproductive structure in isolation.
I'm South African, and I grew up familiar with vygies (Aizoaceae). Some vygies have thick, spreading/ground-covering foliage and distinctive flowers that, when dried, leave a very different-looking reproductive structure. The visual resemblance between the Voynich drawing and a dried vygie/seed capsule caught my attention.
I am not suggesting that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a vygie. The historical/geographical problem is obvious, and I don't have the botanical expertise to make that claim.
What I'm wondering is something more basic:
Could the apparent “flower” in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. actually be a fruit/seed capsule or post-flowering structure?
And, if so:
Does the structure resemble any known plant family more closely when interpreted as a reproductive structure rather than a flower?
Does the apparently thick/spreading foliage support any particular family or growth habit?
Are there Aizoaceae or unrelated Old World plants with sufficiently similar morphology that the resemblance could be more than superficial?
Has anyone previously compared this particular Voynich illustration with succulent groundcover plants or Aizoaceae?
More generally, how much confidence should we place in the apparent flower/leaf/root morphology when assessing Voynich plants, given the possibility of artistic distortion?
One reason I'm asking is that some Voynich plants seem remarkably convincing while others are, frankly, spectacularly strange. ?
That made me wonder whether we're sometimes judging the botanical accuracy of the whole illustration when perhaps the artist was much more accurate about certain features than others.
So I'm curious what people who have spent far more time with the manuscript see here.
Am I seeing a meaningful botanical resemblance, or have I simply found another excellent example of the human brain being extremely good at finding patterns?
I'd genuinely love to hear the botanists/illustration specialists/long-time Voynich researchers weigh in.
Thank you!