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

[R. Sale]

Perhaps it is not the people as plants, but the barrels as pots. With an artistic background, these tub patterns might be compared with certain, traditional heraldic examples such as paley, bendy, barry, chevrony and so on from heraldica.org or other sources.

Rather than images that need to wait till the ability to interpret the text has been achieved, perhaps the illustrations will guide the investigation to the segments of text that are needed to begin that process of interpretation.