(12-03-2016, 09:58 PM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wouldn't be surprised if the Voynich root figures are a witness of an earlier form or independent side development of this practice. There are some interesting parallels but differences as well, and the "affected" plants are always different ones, as far as I can see.
This seems to me a reasonable hypothesis, but I am not sure I understand what you mean by "earlier". Earlier of what? As we have seen, also the most bizarre traits of the herbal tradition are so ancient!
The Voynich manuscript is slightly later than the earliest of the "alchemical herbals" (1378). The alchemical herbals are not the best possible matches for the Voynich manuscript: their main characteristic is that plants are drawn as simplified and geometric, whereas the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript are, in many respects, quite detailed (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. here).
Also, the "quasi-quadruped" roots that appear in the Voynich manuscript, in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and (as you noted) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. do not appear in alchemical manuscripts. It would be interesting to find a good essay about BSB cod.icon.26: likely that work is based on sources that could be interesting parallels for the Voynich manuscript.
Anyway, I think it is clear that the Voynich manuscript is somehow independent from other traditions: the difficult task would be to find the closest cognate. There are many of these manuscripts, and each one contains hundreds of illustrations!