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Similar plants in Botany - Printable Version

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RE: Similar plants in Botany - bi3mw - 18-08-2026

OK, I'll stick with Dioscorides for now. The plants, including their roots, are already quite similar. Here's a quick extraction
of some of the plants (using AI) from Grec 2183. This is a good one to play around with.

   
   

RE: Similar plants in Botany - ololololo - 18-08-2026

In the case of VMS, it seems to me that the author might have gone back to an already drawn plant and redrawn part of it. Sometimes they are too similar.

RE: Similar plants in Botany - Linda - 19-08-2026

(18-08-2026, 10:00 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If we really must correlate VM plants to real ones, I think we should stick to those which are attested in contemporary herbals. Some of the plants you proposed are not native to Europe.
Chenopodium/Blitum species bearing red fruit are mostly of American or Asian origin and naturalized in Europe. Blitum virginatum grows in Europe but is rare and not known as medicinal plant from any herbals to my knowledge.
Celosia argentea is native to tropical Africa. The cristate variety arose in cultivation in Asia.

There is no doubt the VM artist was inspired by other herbals, but I do not believe the drawings depict real plants, as they are likely composites. Which plant is it supposed to be if the artist coped flowers from plant A, leaves from plant B and roots from plant C?

I am not convinced that the artists were playing "heads bodies and legs" with the plants, I am often surprised to find commonalities in the roots with what i see above. I do agree that the idea that they are shuffled should be investigated, since many seem to believe in this idea, and we can only learn more by doing so. Many aren't drawn true to life but i think that is a different mechanism, I think of it as mnemonics, drawing something notable that if you know the plant you would understand the idea and associate the two. True, this can lead to multiple identifications if the leeway on "looks like" is too lax or a plethora of like species from different locales resemble the one shown. But maybe they are referring to any such like species, for instance, I consider pretty much all the different Chenopodium species in my yard as either wild spinach or wild quinoa, although there are differences between them, and some are native and others are not. 

I consider all the knapweeds as knapweeds too, I group lots of things like that, Aquilegia are Aquilegia.

Yes, I live in NA so the ones that occur near me are the plants I know best, but i am not a botanist and can't generally read most of the European examples of the time, nor can i be sure of what they are called now, nor are they always drawn true to life either. However, many of the plants that grow near me originate in Europe, were brought over either on purpose or by soles of feet, etc. I tried to be thorough in making sure some version of my examples were native to Eurasia or Africa and not as originating anywhere else, in absence of any in Eurasia. It also seems to me that some of the drawings suggest that some of the plants might have been traded for, and were  procured as dry roots or even just cuttings thereof. So there could be some exotics in there.

Wiki entries

Blitum - Good King Henry has been moved to Blitum from Chenopodium. (I just learned this)
Blitum bonus-henricus (syn. Chenopodium bonus-henricus), also called Good-King-Henry,[1] poor-man's asparagus, perennial goosefoot, Lincolnshire spinach, Markery,[2] English mercury, or mercury goosefoot,[3] is a species of goosefoot which is native to much of central and southern Europe.

This one is red
[Image: 500px-Chenopodium_foliosum.JPG?utm_sourc...=thumbnail]
Blitum virgatum,[1] (syn. Chenopodium foliosum) is a species of flowering plant in the amaranth family known by the common name leafy goosefoot. It is native to Eurasia. It can be found on other continents as an introduced species, growing as a minor weed in disturbed habitats and cultivated land.

Chenopodium has a basically cosmopolitan distrbution as a genus, but I was thinking album, not quinoa, for instance, although I do have alba, glaucum, and many others in my own yard, not put there by me, glaucum is also European. Re album:
Its native range is obscure due to extensive cultivation,[9] but includes most of Europe,[10] from where Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1753.[11] Plants native to eastern Asia are included under C. album, but often differ from European specimens.[6] According to Plants of the World Online, the species' natural distribution includes temperate Eurasia from western Europe to China and the Russian Far East, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, Ethiopia, and the eastern and central United States.[2]

It is widely naturalized elsewhere, such as in Africa,[12] Australasia,[13] North America,[5] and Oceania,[4] and now occurs almost everywhere (except Antarctica)[1] in soils rich in nitrogen, especially on wasteland.[citation needed]

Erigeron is also cosmopolitan as a genus, if you want a specifically European species, E. alpinus should do for what I was trying to convey.

I also do tend to give leeway to things possibly happening without having being recorded, like someone having seen Celosia before the recorded introduction of 1570 that is now listed in Wikipedia. It seems reasonable to me to allow that a few Europeans could have seen it before then, especially if they seem to be a plant collector. There are also versions in Cambodia and Indonesia, again, there are trade routes, someone could have seen them? But maybe that's not it, that is another possibility.

RE: Similar plants in Botany - bi3mw - 19-08-2026

(19-08-2026, 06:55 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view...... I do agree that the idea that they are shuffled should be investigated, since many seem to believe in this idea, and we can only learn more by doing so.

Of course, it is not certain that the plants in the VMS consist of composite plant parts (what is certain, after all?). One of the problems is finding a reference herbal manuscript. The selection is certainly subjective and only meaningful if the structural characteristics of the plants correspond to some extent. Even then, the result (after painstaking, individual comparisons) can never be definitive proof.


Edit: There are definitely exceptions as well. I would consider the following example a perfect match:
   

RE: Similar plants in Botany - Bernd - 19-08-2026

Many VM plant parts strongly resemble plants in contemporary herbals. I do not think there is a need to introduce exotic plants not found in standard herbals. I think it's interesting that the VM plants follow the general pattern of VM imagery. The author apparently copied from a variety of sources and recombined what he liked into his own creations. With this, I would be very careful with any designations. Even if the author copied a certain plant part from a herbal, it does not necessarily mean the imagery depicts the original plant. Or any real plant at all. The only exception I am willing to accept is the VM 'Viola' which was apparently drawn from a limp live or pressed plant.

C. album, B. bonus-henricus and B. glaucum do not have red fruit. B. virgatum does, but there is no evidence it was used as a medicinal herb in Middle Europe. It was eaten as a leaf vegetable in Eastern Europe though. I'd still rate it as semi-exotic as to my knowledge it isn't described in another herbal.
Regarding Celosia, I found out that it was introduced from Subsaharan Africa to China via the maritime silk road as early as approx. AD 200 and spread throughout Asia to India from there. It's known from Indian sources around AD 1000. That's much earlier than I had imagined. Still the earliest introduction from Asia to Europe appears to be around 1570 (though I am slightly doubtful of those sources), which is 150 years too late for the VM. I'd be very surprised if the VM depicts any rare previously unattested plants from exotic locations.

RE: Similar plants in Botany - Linda - 19-08-2026

(19-08-2026, 03:27 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Of course, it is not certain that the plants in the VMS consist of composite plant parts (what is certain, after all?). One of the problems is finding a reference herbal manuscript. The selection is certainly subjective and only meaningful if the structural characteristics of the plants correspond to some extent. Even then, the result (after painstaking, individual comparisons) can never be definitive proof.

Thank you, and yes, what is certain, after all, about almost anything?  There is always a possibility that the premise under which we investigate is false. 

However, it would be really interesting to learn that some sort of shuffle idea had been at play. What if they were grouped in threes so that you could figure out which leftovers went together? What might that mean for possible page ordering, etc. Maybe you could find the connections between the groups somehow and in doing so the correct page order unlocks some sort of sequence we can't currently detect. Or maybe the formula is more complicated than that. For instance, the similar imagery pointed out in this thread? A game of which goes with which goes exponential. 

[/quote]
Quote:Edit: There are definitely exceptions as well. I would consider the following example a perfect match: 
Really? I can see enough resemblance to say possible, but the differences would keep me from being confident.
What plant is that in real life?

You posted a plant yesterday also, before the manuscript collection image, what was that plant identified as in the manuscript?

RE: Similar plants in Botany - Linda - 20-08-2026

Duplicated

RE: Similar plants in Botany - bi3mw - 20-08-2026

(19-08-2026, 11:53 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Really? I can see enough resemblance to say possible, but the differences would keep me from being confident.
What plant is that in real life?

You posted a plant yesterday also, before the manuscript collection image, what was that plant identified as in the manuscript?

The plant classified as safe is a water lily ( Nenufar ), meaning it belongs to the genus Nymphaea.

The plant comparison from the day before yesterday was made quickly, “at a glance.” Since the plant is not labeled, it is not immediately clear what kind of plant it is.