29-08-2017, 10:49 AM
The most useful post on this topic, in my opinion, was made quite a while ago, and i have not been able to find it back quickly. I believe that it may have been from JKP.
It went along the following lines (now adjusted with some additional points):
A dragon near a plant could indicate several things:
a) the name has something to do with dragons
b) the plant is poisonous
c) the plant can be used against poisoning
d) (new): the plant is important for its sap
Point (d) is clearly still to be confirmed.
Just to pick one of the four options as the preferred one is necessarily an arbitrary decision.
Dragons are very common figures to appear near many different herbs in herbal manuscripts, and their appearance cannot be used to identify the herb.
Even if one were to decide arbitrarily that in the case of the Voynich MS the dragon refers to the name of the herb, the list of options is very large indeed. The list of languages of herb names to pick from is already quite extensive.
It went along the following lines (now adjusted with some additional points):
A dragon near a plant could indicate several things:
a) the name has something to do with dragons
b) the plant is poisonous
c) the plant can be used against poisoning
d) (new): the plant is important for its sap
Point (d) is clearly still to be confirmed.
Just to pick one of the four options as the preferred one is necessarily an arbitrary decision.
Dragons are very common figures to appear near many different herbs in herbal manuscripts, and their appearance cannot be used to identify the herb.
Even if one were to decide arbitrarily that in the case of the Voynich MS the dragon refers to the name of the herb, the list of options is very large indeed. The list of languages of herb names to pick from is already quite extensive.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)