f13r - banana?

[Koen G]

I don't know if VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was meant to represent banana, but it certainly doesn't belong to the same tradition as the Latin manuscripts. If it was meant to represent banana, it appears to have been produced by someone who had seen the plant or a good illustration of it.

This is precisely what I was planning to answer in response to VViews' post, but you beat me to it

It's one of those things the VM does: there are fascinating links with existing herbals, but only for a number of individual plants. So the VM is somehow aware of, or affected by the tradition, but it does much more as well. And either way, I have never seen a plant like this drawn in another herbal, so no matter which ID we propose, we're on Voynich private territory. 

Given the accuracy of certain parts of the drawing, I also think it's one of these three options:
- Made from a detailed description
- Made from a decent drawing
- Made by an eyewitness

As I tried to demonstrate in the opening post, special attention is given to those features which are important for the maintenance and/or propagation of banana plants. Since the sings of planned human interference are there, I'd say that it's almost definitely drawn from a "plantation" rather than from the wild. This might have been one of those places in or close to Europe where efforts were made to grow bananas.