[split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"

[-JKP-]

...

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...

The only pepper plant I know that looks like the ivy "berries" on the VMS vine is Ampelopsis arborea (pepper vine) and it's a North American plant. The other pepper plants that I'm familiar with don't look at all like the VMS in coloration or the shape of the clusters (they tend to be long and narrow), and they retain their leaves.


It occurred to me at one point that it might be Bryony berries (Bryonia), because Bryony loses its leaves and retains the berries in winter, but they are in fairly large clusters and most of them are red rather than black. Bryony is a possibility, however, and matches the VMS drawing more closely than pepper. If Bryony were intended, leaving off the leaves might be one way to distinguish it from Hedera helix if a person were familiar with how the two vines differ in winter. Both Bryony and Hedera were considered medicinal plants.