Saying that it certainly can't be a waterlily isn't any better than saying that it certainly is.
What is true is that we can't be certain either way.
What's also true is that the flower doesn't look like a waterlily flower.
Treating images in a medieval herbal MS as if they should be close representations of nature is most certainly invalid, though the period where this started to happen is roughly the 15th-16th Century, and the Carrara herbal (MS Egerton 2020) of 1440 is a fine example of an early case, produced by a very capable artist.
The flowers of the waterlily (Nenufar) in the early copies of Tractatus de Herbis really don't look like waterlily flowers either.
On the other hand, the drawing of the flower in the so-called waterlily in the Voynich MS seems to be quite detailed and deliberate.
The author of a recent scholarly edition of the Sloane 4016 MS pointed out (as I had also noted) that the flower looks much more like that of a common lily, as depicted in this MS but also in Egerton 747 (in both cases on f 52r, purely coincidentally).
This could lead to the speculation (not his) that the Voynich MS artist thought that the waterlily should have a lily flower. This only makes sense if his native language were English or German (or possibly some other that I am not familiar with).
I will strike that speculation, of course, if someone tells me that 'Wasserlilie' is not attested in the early 15th C.
Postscript:
Let me add a clip of an image of 'Lilius Albus' in the Oxford MS Canon Misc. 500.
This was digtally online in the past but, apparently, no longer. I don't know a date for the MS.
![[Image: lily.jpg]](http://www.voynich.nu/img/simil/lily.jpg)
What is true is that we can't be certain either way.
What's also true is that the flower doesn't look like a waterlily flower.
Treating images in a medieval herbal MS as if they should be close representations of nature is most certainly invalid, though the period where this started to happen is roughly the 15th-16th Century, and the Carrara herbal (MS Egerton 2020) of 1440 is a fine example of an early case, produced by a very capable artist.
The flowers of the waterlily (Nenufar) in the early copies of Tractatus de Herbis really don't look like waterlily flowers either.
On the other hand, the drawing of the flower in the so-called waterlily in the Voynich MS seems to be quite detailed and deliberate.
The author of a recent scholarly edition of the Sloane 4016 MS pointed out (as I had also noted) that the flower looks much more like that of a common lily, as depicted in this MS but also in Egerton 747 (in both cases on f 52r, purely coincidentally).
This could lead to the speculation (not his) that the Voynich MS artist thought that the waterlily should have a lily flower. This only makes sense if his native language were English or German (or possibly some other that I am not familiar with).
I will strike that speculation, of course, if someone tells me that 'Wasserlilie' is not attested in the early 15th C.
Postscript:
Let me add a clip of an image of 'Lilius Albus' in the Oxford MS Canon Misc. 500.
This was digtally online in the past but, apparently, no longer. I don't know a date for the MS.