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+--- Thread: Compound plants in the VMS ? (/thread-3488.html)
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - -JKP- - 25-02-2021
f1v is definitely not agreed upon. I think the two best possibilities are nightshade and Hypericum, but many other IDs have been suggested.
I spent years trying to figure out if nightshade existed in the Old World before the conquest because botanists have expressed contradictory opinions about this. Many of them were saying it didn't exist in the Old World before plants were brought back from the Americas.
I came to the conclusion that there are enough pics of nightshade and eggplant in medieval manuscripts that the Solanaceae family did exist in the Old World in the medieval period (I have an unfinished blog on this with examples).
I think maybe the botanists missed nightshade because it takes time to become familiar with medieval plant drawings, and it had a different name in those days.
Which means it is possible that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is nightshade (but I believe Hypericum is also possible).
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - RenegadeHealer - 25-02-2021
(25-02-2021, 12:26 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is very likely that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the actual first plant, but its ID is far from agreed upon. The water lily is f2v. Apparently You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is also accepted as knapweed, so there might be some initial clustering going on.
Whoops, you're right, Koen. I stand corrected.
From what Wladimir Dulov has taught me about medieval parchment and codex construction, it's very much within the realm of possibility that any given quire was originally an octavo, cut from a single cow skin, four pages wide and two pages high. If this was indeed the case for Q1, then one side of the uncut parchment would look like this:
f3r | f6v | You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. | f2v
---------------------------
f4v | f5r | You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. | f1r
And the flip side would look like this:
f2r | f7v | You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. | f3v
---------------------------
f1v | You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. | You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. | f4r
Unfolded, the upper row of each side would look upside down, and the bottom row right side up. After each side of the octavo was drawn, it could be folded in half once the long way, then twice in half the short way. The creases represented by red lines in my diagram would be stacked and sewn together, while the creases represented by black lines would be cut.
If this is indeed how Q1 was made, then I can't help but noticing f2v, the "water lily"i would be right above the first page f1r. If the uncut parchment sheet were laid out on a table, the scribe could have been writing the introductory page while the illustrator sat directly across from him drawing the water lily.
Repeating this whole reverse engineering process for Q2, I think you'll find that two of the other highly likely identifications (viola on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and marijuana on f16r) would be right next to each other on the same bifolio. Further research is necessary, but it looks quite possible to me that the plant drawings with the most verisimilitude do indeed cluster at the beginning of Herbal A.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - Koen G - 25-02-2021
Wait so they drew on the whole cow skin before cutting it up into four bifolios? Why would they do that? It sounds much more practical to draw on simple bifolios.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - RenegadeHealer - 25-02-2021
(25-02-2021, 10:08 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wait so they drew on the whole cow skin before cutting it up into four bifolios? Why would they do that? It sounds much more practical to draw on simple bifolios.
Fair point. My source for this assumption was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (translated from the Russian with Google Translate), which I read some time ago. I mistakenly thought Wladimir meant that most or all quires of the VMs were originaly conceived and constructed as uncut octavo sheets. I reread this blog post again today, and sure enough, he was talking only about Q13.Indeed, if the finished product was intended to be a codex made of bifolios, then cutting the parchment into bifolios prior to marking them makes more sense. I have no grounds, therefore, for assuming that pages that weren't on the same bifolio were created close to each other in time or spatial layout, to say nothing of theme or intent.
In light of this, I'm still intrigued that f9v and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are both unusually identifiable and realistic, and share the same side of a bifoio. On the other hand, I'm now a lot less intrigued with f2v's positioning, though very much so with its verisimilitude.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - Koen G - 25-02-2021
There is still a decent possibility that the current initial A-language chunk is in its original position and they only got messed up further on, I guess.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - bi3mw - 28-02-2021
Here is an interesting text passage on the subject of "naturalistic representation of plants in the Middle Ages":
Quote:Scientific interest was primarily focused on the question of the benefits of plants, their effectiveness against diseases and ailments. Botany in today's sense, systematic interest in plants, their structure, did not exist. It was not even known that insects played the decisive role in fertilization. Instead, people believed that plant species could merge into others, that male and female forces were at work. People believed in plant marriages.
.....
The hyper-realistic, detailed and therefore reliable drawings appear only towards the end of the 15th century.
Helmut Birkhan: Pflanzen im Mittelalter. Eine Kulturgeschichte
Böhlau Verlag, Wien, Köln und Weimar 2012
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - bi3mw - 01-03-2021
My opinion is that one cannot make such sweeping statements about the accuracy of plant illustrations. But perhaps, in contrast to the review, the statement is more differentiated in the book.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - Pardis Motiee - 08-06-2021
(25-02-2021, 01:04 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.f1v is definitely not agreed upon. I think the two best possibilities are nightshade and Hypericum, but many other IDs have been suggested.
...
Which means it is possible that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is nightshade (but I believe Hypericum is also possible).
Recently, I asked a botanist if this can be nightshade. In summary she thinks it has features of nightshade, but on the other hand the leaf base which is drawn sagittate is creating uncertainty. Is there any species with this leaf among the suggested plants?
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - Mark Knowles - 10-11-2021
(I couldn't find a better thread to put this comment in though I am sure there is one.)
Looking at matches that I made some time ago between small plants and large plants it strikes me that the author of the Voynich simply just was not that careful.
If you look at the attached image the leaves look very similar whilst the roots look very different.
These could certainly be two different plants with very similar leaves. However I think they are meant to be the same plant and that the author has just drawn the roots inconsistently. The roots could have been drawn inconsistently due to the author drawing from memory in each instance what he thought the roots looked like without cross-comparing the drawings so as to spot the inconsistency. It may be that the roots actually looked someway between the two different drawings and that neither drawing is a very good representation on its own.
One could interpret these drawings as being a clever combination of roots from one plant and leaves from another to communicate a particular message. I think that is really an overcomplication. I preferred the idea that the author was not that careful with his drawings as opposed to the idea that the author was doing something very clever with his representation. That strikes me as the most plausible explanation, if not the most exciting explanation.
In fact it should not surprise us that the author might be careless here and it is apparent that the author was careless elsewhere in the manuscript; the unprofessional illustrations themselves are enough to demonstrate this.
RE: Compound plants in the VMS ? - bi3mw - 10-11-2021
(10-11-2021, 06:38 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One could interpret these drawings as being a clever combination of roots from one plant and leaves from another to communicate a particular message.
If one breaks down the individual plants into their components ( root, stem, leaf and flower ) and sees each of these parts as an independent "unit", then your assumption is quite justified. The repeated combination of plant parts to (imaginary) plants would then possibly be the consequence.
Perhaps also the "Doctrine of signatures" plays a certain role.
Here is an example from Giambattista della Porta' s "Phytognomonica". This is of course much too late for the VMS, but Paracelcus, for example, had the same theesis for the representation of plants ( and he was probably not the first ). Della Porta illustrated this very clearly. One can see what it's all about.
Quote:Wikipedia:
The doctrine of signatures was already widely used in antiquity and was already widespread in a prototypical form as a way of thinking in the late Middle Ages, but in its concrete written formulation in Europe it goes back to Paracelsus and the Neapolitan physician and alchemist Giambattista della Porta (1538-1615).
Giambattista della Porta, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , 1588, page 163