The "4 Ages of Man" Folio

[-JKP-]

.... Why can't Euphorbia fruit have a double meaning? It's named after a famous doctor to an ancient king and the resemblance to a scepter or a guardian angel might be a reference to this important person.....

Just to clarify, when it comes to identification of plants according to well-known traditions, I'm fully on your side. Provided the illustrator(s) had no interest in hiding something.
I already had the idea that some plants might be depicted as described, but not on this subject. Of course, Euphorbia is a possible interpretation, but maybe it's too good to be true.

Now I have to stop myself, otherwise it will be completely off topic.

I don't think it's too good to be true. I studied ALL the plants in the VMS for several months before I even began identifying a single one. I wanted to learn the VMS iconography first and then look at individual plant IDs and there are many completely accurate naturalistic plants in the manuscript, regardless of what people say. Even the ones that are somewhat stylized do it in a rational and mostly consistent way.

I have IDs for many of them I haven't posted yet because I simply can't find enough free hours in the day to do it.