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+--- Thread: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations (/thread-1400.html)
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"Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Sam G - 04-01-2017
"Blue dot clusters" show up in six of the herbal illustrations (if I didn't miss any):
Well, what are these things? Flowers?
As usual, any comparisons to actual plants or to botanical imagery in other sources are welcomed.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - -JKP- - 04-01-2017
It think it's possible that some of them are seed heads.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Sam G - 05-01-2017
I can see that they could be seed heads. How common is it for seed heads to actually have blue seeds?
Are seed heads ever colored this way in other types of botanical illustrations?
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - -JKP- - 05-01-2017
(05-01-2017, 11:10 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can see that they could be seed heads. How common is it for seed heads to actually have blue seeds?
Are seed heads ever colored this way in other types of botanical illustrations?
Compared to many old herbal manuscripts, the VMS colors are more true to life, even though the palette is quite limited (red, blue, green, and a faded yellow plus the brown from the gall ink). It doesn't match some of the best herbals, of course, but it is more naturalistic than those that are highly stylized. In the parts that are painted by the more careful hand, the greens have been intermixed with the yellow and blue to create different shades of green. The blue is sometimes watered down to create a lighter blue, a "wash" effect. The red and blue are less often mixed.
In the very stylized medieval herbals, plant parts can be almost any color and sometimes almost any shape, and the only way one can recognize the plant or the part is by the tradition it follows or by the labels.
The VMS is not entirely naturalistic. Some of the plants appear stylized or possibly mythical. With a limited palette, I get the feeling that blue was sometimes chosen simply to designate "dark" (a range of dark colors). Whether it might have a symbolic meaning in the plants you posted, I'm not sure. The squared-off heads seem rather stylized but the blue has been watered down slightly to create a different shade, indicating some attention to detail.
I should mention though, that the possible proportion of plants with seed heads (if that's what they are) may be higher in the VMS than in other herbal manuscripts. Many herbals show only flowers, or mostly flowers, and sometimes no flowers at all. Some herbals only show the parts of the plant that are medicinal (which makes identification difficult without the accompanying text) and some show enough of the plant to identify it.
I have seen a very small number of plant images where the illustrator included both the flowers and the seed heads (showing the plant at two different times of the year to help identification or possibly to indicate that both parts were medicinal), but this is uncommon in the middle ages and didn't become common practice until about the 17th century. When it does happen, it tends to be plants that have unusual spiny, or animalistic seed heads that stand out in a person's mind, like Devil's claw. Thus, what we're seeing in the blue seedlike parts of the VMS seems to be slightly different from the more common traditions.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - -JKP- - 06-01-2017
Sam, I just remembered something...
Even though most herbal manuscripts follow a small number of models (sometimes fairly exactly), there are some that put more emphasis on plants that they know from their area. Also, eastern and western illustrators sometimes have different interpretations of the same plants.
As far as seed heads go, I've noticed a difference in interpretation for plants like cinnamon. The western manuscripts tend to emphasize the bark and leaves (the bark, for obvious reasons is emphasized because it's used to make the cinnamon bark spice), but I've noticed in at least one Arabic manuscript, that the bark and seeds (they look a bit like cloves) are emphasized, rather than the bark and leaves.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Linda - 06-01-2017
I sometimes take such colour combos to suggest white, possibly black and/or white.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - stellar - 06-01-2017
Blue Bugle, from England maybe:
![[Image: se4444-624x468.jpg]](http://spellsforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/se4444-624x468.jpg)
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RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Koen G - 11-01-2017
I think this phenomenon should be looked at from a wider perspective. If you flick through the large-plant images, you see that blue is used a lot in certain smaller plant parts. Seeing how often blue is used, I am almost certain that it is not literally blue but perhaps some catch-all shade for "dark color bit" or "bit that turns dark when dried".
They don't use black in the plant drawings, and brown is reserved for woody parts and some leaves. Hence, I think that the color is relevant but shouldn't be taken at face value.
Just an example of a bit that turns dark when dried. This is clove as it looks on the plant (looks extremely Voynichy)
![[Image: 2.3.12cloves2.jpg]](http://www.brittanypowell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2.3.12cloves2.jpg)
And clove in its dried form:
![[Image: 437389_womenw.jpg]](http://almraah.net/uploads/11-2015/437389_womenw.jpg)
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Sam G - 11-01-2017
(11-01-2017, 03:19 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think this phenomenon should be looked at from a wider perspective. If you flick through the large-plant images, you see that blue is used a lot in certain smaller plant parts. Seeing how often blue is used, I am almost certain that it is not literally blue but perhaps some catch-all shade for "dark color bit" or "bit that turns dark when dried".
They don't use black in the plant drawings, and brown is reserved for woody parts and some leaves. Hence, I think that the color is relevant but shouldn't be taken at face value.
Definitely. I just like to rule out the possibility that the colors are intended to represent the actual colors of the plant if possible. Both the blue and red in the herbal sections seem to have some kind of symbolic function, at least in some cases.
RE: "Blue Dot Clusters" in Herbal Illustrations - Diane - 01-02-2017
The range avoided in the botanical imagery is, as I've been saying for some time,the range pink-mauve-purple-black with the naturally pink or reddish -mauve painted red, and the others blue.
I'm not sure why this might seem better expressed more generally as "darker" but doing so does tend to slide over the critical issues:
1. that a reasonable explanation has to be found for such avoidance.
2. that the explanation cannot argue an inadequate range of pigments: most people knew how to mix colours, and any survey of fifteenth century Latin manuscripts shows it is not a Latin European tabu.
3. When the manuscript's internal evidence offers a contradiction to the "Latin European author" theory, it is a contradiction of some importance.
Similarly, the form of the head on f.55v is of interest. A comparable pattern (using round, not square 'columns') is found employed on the Voynich map (the whole of that folio is a map, not just one detail in it). There, the pattern seems to me to represents a particular type of geological formation. But we also see the square sort in mosaics from the eastern Mediterranean during the pre-Christian and the early Byzantine period.
So in the original source(s) used for the Vms, was there some common idea - or better still some single word - which informed the thought behind all three?
I'm sure anyone who has read much of my work will be tired of hearing that pictures embody words, and ways of thought, and cultural attitudes, and that our aim should surely be less to work to promote a theory than to correctly identify the time, place, and culture which first produced this imagery.. and perhaps even the Voynich script.
That's how I see the task, anyway.