Morten, if you gave a 13th-century herbal manuscript without labels to a group of botanists, they would have a hard time identifying any of them.
After 12 years of really working at it, I can identify most of them without labels BUT it is ONLY because I now know how they drew Acacia in the 9th to 15th centuries, how they drew Oreganum, how they drew Salvia, etc. They had certain ways of doing it that they copied from other manuscripts enough times that it became traditional to do it a certain way.
There's more than one tradition... There seem to be three main ones, one less primary and a couple of outlyers, but all in all, if you learn the traditions, you have one of the important fundamentals.
But there's more...
Figuring them out has to do with more than knowing the traditions and the way they were drawn. It also depends on how they ordered them. There are traditions for that too. Not all were alphabetic, some were according to use, some according to plant characteristics, some according to local names.
So... MANY of the old plant drawings don't look very much like the plant, but if you can identify the drawing tradition AND the ordering tradition, you can get a pretty good percentage.
So it isn't really botany. It can't be, because they aren't very good drawings. One has to learn how they did things in those days. It's more history and iconography than botany for about 80% of those old herbals.
After 12 years of really working at it, I can identify most of them without labels BUT it is ONLY because I now know how they drew Acacia in the 9th to 15th centuries, how they drew Oreganum, how they drew Salvia, etc. They had certain ways of doing it that they copied from other manuscripts enough times that it became traditional to do it a certain way.
There's more than one tradition... There seem to be three main ones, one less primary and a couple of outlyers, but all in all, if you learn the traditions, you have one of the important fundamentals.
But there's more...
Figuring them out has to do with more than knowing the traditions and the way they were drawn. It also depends on how they ordered them. There are traditions for that too. Not all were alphabetic, some were according to use, some according to plant characteristics, some according to local names.
So... MANY of the old plant drawings don't look very much like the plant, but if you can identify the drawing tradition AND the ordering tradition, you can get a pretty good percentage.
So it isn't really botany. It can't be, because they aren't very good drawings. One has to learn how they did things in those days. It's more history and iconography than botany for about 80% of those old herbals.