Morten St George Theory

[-JKP-]

I guess you're not familiar with the details of plants or of other plants that look similar to the "sunflower" so you just accept at face value a questionable ID.

I think I read somewhere that the VMS sunflower was first identified as a sunflower not by Tucker and Janick but by great botanical experts from the first half of the 20th century. No?

I also read that the sunflower is a native American plant unknown in Europe until Columbus brought it back so, even if the VMS drawings of the sunflower aren't perfect, I'd say those drawings were more likely made by someone who had seen a real sunflower than by someone who had never seen a real sunflower.

Real plants in the VMS are more likely to be depicted in the pharmaceutical section than on the single-plant pages. That's where you will find the jalapeno peppers that merit further study.

You're making the same logical error that a lot of people make. First of all you are assuming the SCALE of the plant. We don't know the scale of the plants. The scale may vary. Then you are assuming that there are no Old World plants similar to the sunflower. In fact, many African plants have this same form.

If someone who doesn't know anything about foxes and wolves, who is only familiar with domestic dogs saw a fox in the grass, they would probably assume it was a dog of some kind and THAT is the main mistake I see in people making plant IDs. As soon as they see something FAMILIAR, they stop, and they fail to consider that there might be plants UNfamiliar to them that also look that way.


And by the way, I do agree with Koen that one of the IDs for the "sunflower" that should be considered is a cereal crop. The leaves are right and the many small circles might represent grain kernels in a conceptual way (tipped over to show they are round and that there are many of them).