[split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"

[Koen G]

JKP: yes, but then again I have the impression that if there's one thing the VM finds important, it's the leaves. I just don't see why exactly the berries of ivy would be singled out. Even in images of grape plants, the leaves would usually be featured, whether it be in antiquity or the middle ages, in decorations or otherwise. 

If this is one of the Indian plants, of which I believe there are a few, then it might be an important one for trade. For example, pepper was grown on trees (a commenter on Nick's site once proposed this could be pepper, can't recall his name at the moment). Pepper was, and still is, encouraged to climb on other trees and was also found like that in the wild. Not in the ivy-parasite way but in the grape-support way. If it's pepper though, or anything similar, I see no way to confirm it until we can read the text, since we've only got the berries...

Anyway, the reasoning would be then that whoever first composed this drawing used the "oak is host tree"-trope as a template and adapted it to add the other vine. This of course assumes that the oak pairing was present in the now lost sources that may have been common to the Italian herbals and the VM alike.