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+--- Thread: The simplest plant (/thread-3491.html)
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The simplest plant - R. Sale - 24-02-2021
Regarding compound plants, let's look the other way.
It was suggested " that correct plant identifications could provide a crucial clue to deciphering the text." And that surely would be something important, if we had one - but we don't. Why is that?
In order to demonstrate the concept, a single example is all that's required. The best example is the simplest. The best example of a plant that can be named and identified is the simplest plant.
There are a number of VMs representations to chose from, ones that have fairly well agreed upon identifications: violets, water lilies, poppies, etc. So there are various candidates. What is needed is a name. something that is distinctive, if that is possible, the proper name in the correct language, if it is to match the VMs (barring encryption). This would require a compilation of all relevant information about the name of the plant or plants. This could be done.
However the greater problem remains in interpreting the VMs. How to determine which vord(s) to compare with the proposed version of the name of the plant? By the number of glyphs? - By what criteria? As far as I know, there is no answer for that. How does this comparison and potential identification of text take place?
RE: The simplest plant - Aga Tentakulus - 24-02-2021
[quote="R. Sale" pid='43984' dateline='1614124199']
There are a number of VMs representations to chose from, ones that have fairly well agreed upon identifications: violets, water lilies, poppies, etc.
How is that supposed to work? If what you consider safe already has 2 errors out of 3.
Where did you see the poppy?
What do you think the water lily is? And in how many recipes have you read it?
RE: The simplest plant - R. Sale - 24-02-2021
The poppy was recently mentioned in the random plants thread. Water lilies was a suggestion from some time back - pre-ninja. Perhaps these are not the best choices as accepted identifications.
The point is - if discovering a known plant name to be identified in the VMs text is going to be possible, then it makes sense to take the easiest and most obvious examples first. Clearly certain plants have various names in different languages. Apparently I picked some poor examples. However, if we cannot manage to make the text connection in the case of the ones that provide the best opportunity to accomplish the task, (the simplest plant identification - whichever one that might be), then how can we expect any results from more difficult identifications? In which case, we are back to my original statement (in the compound plants discussion) - Even a potentially valid plant identification reveals nothing beyond itself. [Western Hemisphere plants would imply post-Columbian chronology, but that interpretation has not been established.]
From early on, a lot of effort has been spent on VMs plant identification, with very little to show for results. A viola is a viola is a viola, but what is it in the VMs text? It almost seems that the whole plant section merely serves as a distraction. Time spent searching in the closet will not discover what was hidden under the bed - or a nebuly line that was used as a cosmic boundary.
RE: The simplest plant - Aga Tentakulus - 24-02-2021
As you say yourself, you have to be sure of your choice right from the start, preferably 100%.
Poppy and water lily are certainly not.
Violets can be considered safe.
Here is an example:
I give you an almost 100% that it occurs in the VM. The characteristics are unmistakable.
RE: The simplest plant - Koen G - 24-02-2021
I'm not sure if I understand correctly. Isn't this what prof Bax did?
The problem is that only a handful of plant ID's are considered safe, and one could even argue about some of those. And in order to confirm a system, you would need to be able to expand it to a much larger set of words.
RE: The simplest plant - -JKP- - 24-02-2021
The only plant that is generally agreed-upon is Viola. All the others are disputed, including poppy, water lily, etc.
I think Ricinus and Cannabis are also good choices, but even those are disputed.
RE: The simplest plant - -JKP- - 24-02-2021
Aga, there are several species that look very similar to that. They are all ground-spreading plants. They all have the same shaped leaves. They all have the little dots of pinkish flowers at the leaf nodes. The only difference between them is the arrangement of the little dot flowers, and since they didn't draw this detail well enough in medieval drawings, one cannot be sure which one it is without a label.
In my opinion. the VMS drawing of this group of plants is more accurate, but I would be careful about comparing it to other plant books of the time (they are less accurate).
Possibilities include Polygonum aviculare, Peplis portula, Ammannia baccifera, [font=Arial]Euphorbia maculata, [font=Arial]Euphorbia prostrata, Euphorbia thymifolia (maybe, or this may be VMS f4r), and a few others that are less common. Here are two that I particularly like:[/font][/font]
[font=Arial][font=Arial]
![[Image: VMSPlant21r.png]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/VMSPlant21r.png)
[/font][/font]
RE: The simplest plant - Aga Tentakulus - 24-02-2021
@JKP
You are right. You shouldn't rely on pictures alone.
You should know me by now enough that I wouldn't do that. There is a lot more to it.
One possibility is Polygonum aviculare. That would also be the one I showed.
The others you mention (I flew over them briefly), you should reconsider.
I think your work is a bit older and needs new evaluation.
RE: The simplest plant - R. Sale - 24-02-2021
Let's not try to clarify any of the increasingly fuzzy plant IDs here. Let's take those that have the strongest correlations based on identification and run them through the second screen, based on their occurrence in medieval literature, with preference to an open C-14 time span of 1400-1450.
Suppose we start with the viola. Has there been a collection of "viola" texts from this time period, that have been compared with the structure of the VMs text?
So in the first part, we need the best plant IDs, but in the second part, it's a problem of text recovery, selection and analysis. In the second part, we need the best comparative text. There is also the need to have some metric for comparison. It doesn't seem that isolated words would be sufficient, but there could be some other pattern.
RE: The simplest plant - ReneZ - 25-02-2021
One of the major problems with this simple approach is, that finding a textual match for one single plant proves exactly nothing with respect to the validity of the translation.
It only starts to become credible if one can find matches for a significant number of them.