[split] Color annotations?

[-JKP-]

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Can anyone say whether the plants which have the colour indicators are those for which it's easy to come up with identifications?  Might someone in the fifteenth century have come across the unilluminated VMS, scratched their head, and gone to another illustrated herbal and matched plants and colours as best they could?

Even though it's a reasonably good drawing, I don't think one can make a definitive ID for the plant on 1v.

There are a number of slightly viny plants (not vines, but plants that lean and stretch sideways or have slightly curving stalks) that have berries and clasping leaves that exhibit different colors that would qualify. It's really impossible to narrow it down to one and I can't understand why so many people latch onto one ID when there are almost always several plants with a certain cluster of characteristics.

The most likely possibilities (in my opinion) are Hypericum (there are three that are of particular interest) or one of the Old World Solanaceae (there are two that might qualify). It could even be Veronica beccabunga, Anagallis arvensis, Vaccinium oxycoccus, Azalea procumbens, or Cucubalus baccifer, all of which are viny with berry-like fruits, some of which have red and green leaf variations.


I'm leaning toward Hypericum for two reasons... the leaves of some species do somewhat alternate red and green (it's a distinctive characteristic of the plant) and some species are crushed to produce a red dye. The root looks like it MIGHT be mnemonic for a piece of fabric, so a plant that yields dye would fit. Nevertheless, I don't think the other possibilities can be ruled out.



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Oh, something I should mention... the dye color that comes out of the plant is not always the final color. Depending on which chemicals (from other plants, or vinegar, or other substances) that are mixed with the dye, the combination can produce quite a range of colors, some of which don't look like the original color. For example, onion skins of the same color can create a wide range of natural dyes ranging from brownish-blues to yellow, orange, and brown.