08-01-2017, 06:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-01-2017, 08:50 PM by -JKP-.
Edit Reason: Corrected typo: don't it's = don't think it's
)
I've spent a great deal of time looking at the VMS plants, I have some knowledge of plants, and have catalogued more than 20,000 plants in a database (a years-long project). I can recognize a fairly high percentage of plants in the old herbals without looking at labels (and the labels confirm that my IDs are correct). I can even ID some of the really weird ones because I gradually learned the iconography for historical precedents.
I have studied small details of the plants and I am pretty confident that two things were important to the person who drew them (two attributes that were not of interest to many of the previous herbal illustrators)... these are the leaf margins and the direction of the veins. In some of the naturalistic drawings (not the fanciful ones), the leaf margins have some very fine details that one would only notice if one were intimately familiar with the plant, and the veins are correct as well.
Having observed this a long time ago (2008), I took some pains over the next couple of years to confirm or deny the impression and gained quite a bit of respect for the drawings. Clearly some of the leaves, roots, and flowers have been adjusted in stylistic or mnemonic ways, but for the naturalistic ones, leaf margins and veins are important to the person who drew them.
I mention all this because plant You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has parallel veins and I don't think it's arbitrary. I think it was intended to reflect the actual morphology of the plant. If it turns out that this detail is intentional, and if the dragon-like critter has some relationship to the plant, then it might help determine one or the other (or both).
I have studied small details of the plants and I am pretty confident that two things were important to the person who drew them (two attributes that were not of interest to many of the previous herbal illustrators)... these are the leaf margins and the direction of the veins. In some of the naturalistic drawings (not the fanciful ones), the leaf margins have some very fine details that one would only notice if one were intimately familiar with the plant, and the veins are correct as well.
Having observed this a long time ago (2008), I took some pains over the next couple of years to confirm or deny the impression and gained quite a bit of respect for the drawings. Clearly some of the leaves, roots, and flowers have been adjusted in stylistic or mnemonic ways, but for the naturalistic ones, leaf margins and veins are important to the person who drew them.
I mention all this because plant You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has parallel veins and I don't think it's arbitrary. I think it was intended to reflect the actual morphology of the plant. If it turns out that this detail is intentional, and if the dragon-like critter has some relationship to the plant, then it might help determine one or the other (or both).