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VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Printable Version

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VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Stefan Wirtz_2 - 15-04-2025

   

As remarked several times already by others, this full plant drawing is rather unique as it shows just three words.

The last word  alag = alayae or alaye ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , first comment) 
comes close to today's russian алыи ("alyy"), which means "Scarlet" (the desease).

Most slavic languages are using somehow adapted `scarlet´ in vocabulary, but some, like Russian, have own descriptions for it which may be old enough to appear in VMS.
I have reason to assume the three vords mean "effective against scarlet".

Medieval herbal treatment suggestions were thyme, sage and yellow avens and surely some more. 

This plant is surely not thyme or sage.
But yellow avens, Geum urbanum or maybe Geum aleppicum, are quite good-looking here, enough images at the internet. Both are often plagued by gall wasps, which produce thickened root stems.

Creeping avens (Geum reptans) produces networking roots with several knots, but they look still different from drawing. 
Yes, "these roots": the pictured roots are not as nice and fitting as Filipendula, but that plant is not on f65v.

The draftsman made 2 mistakes: outer blossom leafs, the "spikes", should be rotated a bit, they are not exactly behind an inner blossom leaf when their number is not higher than 5.
Otherwise I understood that the outer leafs are always limited to 5, while inner leafs may be more than 5. Drawing shows some 6+6 combinations.

Following is creeping avens, the left blossom is still flowering, all other began fruiting.

So this is my suggestion for 65r.

[font=Arial]     [/font]

RE: VMS f65r: Weird leaves - Jorge_Stolfi - 03-09-2025

There seems to be something weird with the leaves of f65r.

     

Most plants in the VMS have leaves arranged in opposite pairs along a stem or branch, with either a single full-size leaf at the tip or a full-size pair.  (Few if any have a branch or stem ending with a few smaller leaves and an apical leaf bud, as many real plants do.)

Apparently the idea of whoever devised the drawing of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant was to follow that model.  And indeed there is one pair of leaves that fits that model: namely, the third one from the top along the left margin. The branch arrives at that pair in the NE diretion, makes a sharp 90° turn to NW at that point, then turns back to NE with a smooth curve.  One leaf of the pair is drawn in front of the branch,the other behind it.  Each of these two leaves is symmetrical with (in this case) four lobes on each side and one at the tip.  The leaves do not seem to have stalks, but attach dierctly to the branch at a single point. 

The unpaired leaves at the branch tips look the same, although some may have five lobes on each side, instead of four.

However, every leaf pair other than that one seems to have been mashed into a single mis-shaped monster leaf that grows sideways out from the branch like a broad two-sided battle-ax.  Measured on the page, branches are only 2-3 mm wide, but the base of these "siamese" leaves are ~10 mm wide.

How could this happen?  Perhaps the scribe misunderstood the Author's sketch, or the alchemical herbal he was supposed to copy the leaves from?

All the best, --jorge

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Bernd - 03-09-2025

It would not be the first time that the artist mis-interpreted a source drawing. The style shows some resemblance to f95v2 which is also by Hand 3. However, compared to many other 'weirdos' in the VM, I consider this a fairly realistic plant. Some Rosaceae like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have stipules that surround the stem.

[Image: 960px-Agrimonia_odorata_%E2%80%94_Flora_...me_v17.jpg]

[Image: Agrimonia_eupatoria3.jpg]

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Jorge_Stolfi - 03-09-2025

(03-09-2025, 07:41 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some Rosaceae like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have stipules that surround the stem.

Could be... But in that example the stipule is very different from the main leaves (which are composite with well-separated lobes).  Whereas on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the "monster leaves" look just like pairs of main leaves.

Also, on that example the stipule is attached transversally, around the stem (like the smaller leaf of f8r); whereas on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the "monster leaves" are attached along it.

All the best, --jorge

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Petrasti - 21-09-2025

Regarding the word derivation, the following should be considered: (I use for the word checks voynichese.com)
Let's take the second word dam. This word has 98 additional occurrences in the manuscript in this form; if the word stands for "against," this could still be understood. The word alam, which then stands very specifically for scarlet fever, has 8 occurrences in the same form. Based on regular repetitions of other words in the manuscript, one finds the root words with prefixes like a,o,ch,qo ...
If you search for the word without the a, thus for lam, you get another 6 hits.
If you search for olam, there are another 6 hits. Now the word rad also appears as chlam with one hit. We also have an o-to-a swap in quite a few words in the manuscript, and find not only lam but also lom, and then again with olom and alom as before.

The word dam appears in Voynich with the same typical prepositions as mentioned above: adam, ydam, odam, qodam, chdam, chodam, oldam.

Of course, we can say that the preamble assumption is wrong, but we have no choice but to look for a rule based on the grammatical repetitions in the manuscript.

We can also reduce the whole thing even further just to show the problems. The word "al" and "am" also appears in the manuscript. It could also be that "al am" is a combination of both words, and unfortunately, the letter "m" also appears on its own. 

You can view the variations of these words at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The asterisk before a word like *lam shows you all words that contain lam

This interplay of grammatical rules makes it difficult to translate individual words. Words must be checked against repetitions in the manuscript to determine whether and how many multiple occurrences exist, and whether the word can still be used in context.


I'll give you another example of the pre-sound rule:

Take the word daiin.

Look at the pre-sounds the word also has.

odaiin, ydaiin, ldaiin, qodaiin, pdaiin, tdaiin, chodaiin, c+hdaiin... The question is whether daiin can even be the root word, since there are also daiiin and dain. :-)

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - RobGea - 22-09-2025

Why are the 3 words on .f65r not half an inch lower down ?   There is plenty of space there.

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Bernd - 23-09-2025

Yes, that's odd but not unique. Look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. In fact, on most pages, the text is needlessly crammed together, in some instances touching the drawing, while vast portions of the page remain blank. Especially when the author writes a paragraph on lower regions of a page, it starts so high it often runs into the drawing while there would be more than enough space below. Was there more text planned or was the writer simply inexperienced (young)? Curiously it appears to happen with all hands.

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Petrasti - 23-09-2025

Could it also be that the text was dictated and the writer didn't know exactly how much space to allocate? But that's not my area of expertise at all; it's just a thought. 
What else do you think could be the reason? The pictures seem to have been drawn before, right?

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Jorge_Stolfi - 23-09-2025

(23-09-2025, 12:01 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Especially when the author writes a paragraph on lower regions of a page, it starts so high it often runs into the drawing while there would be more than enough space below. Was there more text planned or was the writer simply inexperienced (young)?

I see that happening on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f41r.  I think the Scribe was just very bad at layout planning. This "ability" is seen throughout the manuscript.  Whatever the reason.

Quote:In fact, on most pages, the text is needlessly crammed together, in some instances touching the drawing, while vast portions of the page remain blank.

On those three pages, apart from the above miscalculation for the first line, the placement of parag 2 seems to be as good as it could be.   I suppose that the Scribe or Author wanted it to be as close to parag 1 as possible, since the two must have been one single text.  And/or the Author wanted to leave space at the bottom of the page, for further annotations (by himself or by a future owner).

Quote:Curiously it appears to happen with all hands.

Indeed it is intriguing how all the Scribes were equally inept as illustrators and layout planners...

All the best, --jorge

RE: VMS f65r: a "spiked" plant - Jorge_Stolfi - 23-09-2025

(22-09-2025, 05:55 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why are the 3 words on .f65r not half an inch lower down ?   There is plenty of space there.

As you may have noticed, I have this idée fixe that the drawings and the text of the VMS have been extensively restored many decades after it was written, by careful or sometimes not-so-careful retracing of the faded originals; and, in this process, many drawings were "improved" with spurious details.  

So my explanation for that page, in particular, is that the leaves of the original drawing were smaller and did not encroach in the label.

But  i may also be that, when the Scribe started writing the label at that place and orientation, he did not realize that it would run into the plant.

All the best, --jorge