f3v is probably ramsthorn, Rhamnus catharticus, also known as buckthorn. The code attribution is the first four glyphs in the 5th word, 2nd line, 1st paragraph and is sounded r-t-h-n.
The mnemonic is in the leaves. They seem to show a top view of six rams all facing outward with their huge horns in herd defensive stance. The leaves also resemble somewhat the leaves of the herb. I don't know if the mnemonic is only the rams or if it is rams plus horns - I favor the first choice.
Thank you.
Don of Tallahassee
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Let's continue this thread. You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. is another folio from my "focal set" of botanical folios.
No wide consensus in identifications exists. Th. Petersen and the Finnish biologist are silent about this. Sherwood thinks this to be Helleborus foetidus, and Steve D - Aconitum napellus.
The assumption of Helleborus foetidus does apparently come from the shape of the leaves as depicted in the VMS. English "Bear's foot" or German "Baerenfuss" are folk names of Helleborus foetidus.
Now let's apply the "heads & tails" approach for the sake of testing. Suppose this
is "Helleborus foetidus", and the "heads" (the tops) thus fit well - the folk name corresponds to that.
What about the "tails" - the root? The root looks like a scorpion's tail. Is there any relation between helleborus foetidus and scorpions? It turns out that there is!
Click the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. to find out what "Myth in Indo-European Antiquity" (University of California Press, 1974) has to say on the subject. Looks like the scorpion is not directly attached
to Helleborus foetidus specifically by Pliny, but it somewhat hangs around hellebore in general.
And again Plinius Maior!
So the "heads and tails" begins to get more specific. The guy used tops mnemonics for the folk names, and roots mnemonics
sourced from Pliny the Elder for Latin names.
Still a hypothesis, of course, based on just two folios. To be tested further.
Here's the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. in Pliny dedicated to hellebore, but I can't find where he speaks of scorpions there.
And actually "Myth in Indo-European Antiquity" is not accurate when it says that "bear's foot" is helleborus niger. It is not helleborus niger but helleborus foetidus.
So I am not that sure...
Strangely, Pritzel attributes the medieval Latin name "branca ursina" not to hellebore, but to cirsium oleraceum. An error?
The passage in Pliny is You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.. He does talk about white hellebore.
I agree that the root looks somewhat like a scorpion's tail, but the Scorpio in the zodiac/calendar section was apparently drawn by someone who had no idea what a scorpion looks like. This doesn't necessarily refute your idea, as the pictures could have originated in different sources, but it should be kept in mind.
On Pritzel: His book was posthumously edited, so it could be that some notes were mixed up. But the same name was often used for very different plants in different times and places.
Ha!
What then, if this plant is not the one which revives the scorpion by the one which kills it - namely (according to Pliny XXVII, 2) - aconite? (This would be identification by Steve D, btw).
...And it is called
monkhood or
Moenchkappen, and the flowers in the folio indeed look like hoods!
Still it's good to check what the leaves look like...
We've been doing excellent teamwork in the past couple of days! Pritzel is a killer book!
UPD: Another name from Pritzel:
Blaukappenblumen. Capital!
As to the leaves. They loosely resemble fish. One of the German names in Pritzel is "Fischerkip" (don't know what "kip" stands for). Another is "Teufelswurz", so maybe leaves are intended to represent horned devils.
(11-01-2017, 01:18 PM)Oocephalus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The passage in Pliny is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. He does talk about white hellebore.
I agree that the root looks somewhat like a scorpion's tail, but the Scorpio in the zodiac/calendar section was apparently drawn by someone who had no idea what a scorpion looks like. This doesn't necessarily refute your idea, as the pictures could have originated in different sources, but it should be kept in mind.
On Pritzel: His book was posthumously edited, so it could be that some notes were mixed up. But the same name was often used for very different plants in different times and places.
Oocephalus, at first I thought the lizard-scorpions in a small number of zodiac cycles were drawn that way because the illustrators didn't know what a scorpion looked like (and they were from central Europe so it's quite possible they DIDN'T know what a scorpion looked like), but I discovered after some more research that there is a greenish lizard in central Europe called Scorpio. So, it's possible that the lizard and its name may have inspired the zodiac Scorpios that look like lizards or lizard-dragons rather than actual scorpions.
Anton - shouldn't you begin by demonstrating that what we see in this folio looks like either (a) a bear's foot or (b) a representation of Hellebore in some text or other?
Subjective interpretation of the detail at the head may well lead to a wrong id, but then if only that (possibly quite wrong) id is the main spring to how you decide to interpret what you see at the 'foot', then what you have is a circular self-supporting (but otherwise unsupported) argument which - were an argument of similar sort proferred about the text's written part - you yourself would never countenance for a moment.
I will say that the way you simply assert that the form taken by the root is meant to refer to the scorpion (no qualifications, no hint of guessing included as you say that) was done with such elan; with such devil-may-care insouciance, that it really (honestly) brought a happy grin to my own fact, too. It's so nice to see people enjoying work of this sort, that even though you are surely mistaken, it hardly seems to matter.
In fact, I'm going to see if I can provide you with some circumstantial evidence: a picture - no matter whether ancient, modern, literal, or purely imaginative - which shows a noticeably hairy scorpion, with no sting to its tail, no head, no legs and no claws, with a thorax formed in five segments of descending size and a ring of white material clearly separating each. Wish me luck
