Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?

[Aurara84]

In another essay in the same volume, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. focuses on the alchemical tradition. She notices that the illustrations do not fit in the alchemical tradition, mostly because almost all the figures are women, while alchemy made extensive use of male and female elements and sexual metaphors. Yet she seems to believe that the illustrations are likely allegorical: alchemy can then be useful as a parallel, since it is a contemporary line of largely newly-created allegorical imagery, mostlt based on personifications.

I know it's pretty far removed from 15th Century Europe but I found some interesting passages (that your comment above reminded me of) in the book, 'Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovation and Cultural Changes, Vol. 28' by Michael Conan and W. John Kress:

“The use of flowers and floral symbolism figured predominantly in ancient Iranian religions, which developed an elaborate “language of flowers”, to borrow the nineteenth-century French formula. In Zoroastrian religion, and especially in Mazdaism, a different flower or herb was associated with each of the deities called ‘yazatas’. In this sacred garden landscape, flowers were construed as the symbolic receptacles for the spiritual energies of the various deities, affording unlimited possibilities for the contemplation and imaginal envisioning of the celestial forms they embodied. Whereas pungent herbs such as myrtle, marjoram and basil were associated with the highest male deities, including the supreme deity, Ahura Mazda (“the Wise Lord”), the rose was associated, appropriately enough, with Daena, one of the female ‘yazatas’, who was the deity of religion. Moreover, her species of rose was even specified in the Pahlavi texts as the ‘gul-e sad varg’ (New Per. ‘gul-i sad barg’), the “hundred-petalled rose,” that is, ‘Rosa centifolia’, which as already indicated was renowned for its sweet fragrance.
The Daena represented a central concept in Zoroastrian theology, ‘daena’ (Middle Per. ‘den’) denoting religion not in the institutional sense but, rather, man’s spiritual self, his inner vision, and moral conscience. In view of the importance of the sophianic principle in Zoroastrianism, ‘daena’ also referred to innate human wisdom as an emanation of divine wisdom, a quality always associated in Persian thought with the feminine. Henry Corbin discerned in the figure of Daena the female archetype of wisdom and intuitive vision who represents the secret presence of the Eternal feminine in man, and who, necessarily construed as an angelophany, is the “Angel of his incarnate soul,” his heavenly guided celestial counterpart.” (page 20)

And then on page 25:
“Applying their innovative hermeneutical strategies to the image of the rose, the Persian mystical poets transformed this mythopoetic signifier of beauty and mystery, which was redolent of associations with ancient Iranian deities and Qur’anic prophets, into the symbol of the ineffability of the divine Essence, by focusing on the ineffable nature of its scent. In the poetic imagination of Rumi in particular, the scent of the rose became the sensory catalyst for imaginal vision of the Divine and for spiritual perception of the Unseen, pointing the way to the rose bush of the Real and the numinous beauty of the soul itself.
(...)
To gauge cultural changes resulting from innovations in rose cultivation, one would have to look sooner to Europe. Although initially debased under the influence of early Christian ascetic ideals that associated it with the hedonism and voluptuousness of the pagan Roman Empire, the culture of the rose “returned” to Europe in the twelfth century. Only during the Renaissance, however, was it truly revived.”