Morten St George Theory

[-JKP-]

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I've heard that the Italian protozoa animal on folio 2v is actually an American tropical plant called Nymphoides aquatica. It grows on the surface of swamp water and no doubt this is what gives the green color to the water in the biology section.

There seems to be little doubt that the real nymphs are plants and not Italian nuns: the nymph plant has a stem like the one depicted in the VMS and, above all, it sprouts out a white flower exactly as depicted in the VMS. It's an open and shut case on ID. This plant currently lives on the north side of the Caribbean. Whether or not it also lived on the south side of the Caribbean during medieval times remains to be determined.

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Well didn't I say Menyanthes/Villarsia upthread? Nymphoides aquatica is Menyanthaceae, the New World version. Villarsia is the Old World version.

The Asian species (especially from west India) is almost identical to the New World version that grows in the Gulf (the one I previously mentioned), and there is no way to tell from a picture whether it is the New World version or the Old World version. They look the same, even in very good botanical drawings, which the VMS is not.


So it is clearly not an open-and-shut case when almost identical plants (which they used to think were the same species) grow in both the New World Gulf and Old World Asia.