Botanical section plant identification summary (work in progress)

[Gavin Güldenpfennig]

Hi all,

I encourage all to move all discussions to relevant folio threads in the "Imagery" subforum.

This thread was intended as reference-only and would feature only those plants ids on which mnemonics there is more or less consensus (if any).

So you can add at least at the viola tricolor (folio 9v), I think, to your list. About this plant is a kind of consensus.

I will follow your encouragement.

[Anton]

[quote="Anton" pid='29494' dateline='1565182798']
So you can add at least at the viola tricolor (folio 9v), I think, to your list. About this plant is a kind of consensus.

Thanks, I'll check that one...

[Koen G]

Check this thread, where we tried to collect a list of most certain plant IDs:
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[Barbrey]

I know nothing about plants but a little about medieval memory techniques, and wonder if you have considered the colour gold on the plants as part of your mnemonics.  My own suspicion is that this is a medieval magic teaching text making heavy use of the Law of Correspondences and signatura rerum, and thus the plants were likely copied from somewhere (already almost unidentifiable) as types, and then manipulated stylistically (or with additional images) to enhance their correspondences as well as the student's memory.  Alchemists and even medical practitioners naturally would highlight areas of the plant they might think contained the prima materia for long or universal life with gold both as a teaching technique but also I would suggest as a mnemonic technique.  Not all of them will have gold on them but I bet the ones that do is not so much following realistic coloring as identifying important areas of the plant.

[Aga Tentakulus]

   
To suggest a plant, I would consider this one.
The root bulb, and the round leaves with the bump are a distinctive feature.
It has also been described in other books, perhaps the entry in Greek is important.

   
But this is not the part that interests me, it is the listing 1-5 and the associated characters.

It seems to be a repetition here.
Question: What is he trying to tell me? Does he want to explain to me the important characteristics between flower, leaves and root?

Where in other books has such a list been made for plants?


Could we say that the ink between the numbers and the VM signs is the same? If not the same person, but the same inkwell?

Can I assume that the individual characters, when they stand alone in the VM text, can also be judged as a number?
There are signs that they sometimes stand for numbers.
For example, in a mixing ratio.

How would you judge this characteristic? Here it is more a matter of feeling than knowing.

[BGantec]

[...]perhaps the entry in Greek is important[...]

the greek entry is: κοτυλιδων[η(?)] = cotyledon
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i dont know the importance of this term...