I don't have strong feelings about this, but I do find the idea that plants may have been drawn from written descriptions attractive. I could not get any positive feedback about this in the old mailing list, but we have seen in the meantime that there are examples of this, e.g. the Cambridge herbal that was discussed here quite intensively 1-2 years ago. But also the 'Musa' plant in several Tractatus copies, as Marco very convincingly showed.
Assuming that the draughtsman was actually familiar with plants from nature, he might have gotten some of them perfectly right, some others he would give real components but not the ones that should belong together, and maybe in some cases he would have no idea and come up with some fantasy plant.
This would explain a few things.
Of course it can be an existing plant, but the fact that JKP could not find any fitting plant for this suggests that it may be some hybrid as described above.
However, there was also a proposed ID on Nick Pelling's forum by "Peter" who has been very active in finding matching plants for many of the pages.
So, of course, I don't know, but I find it an attractive idea.
Edit: w.r.t. the root, I do not find it exceptional.
Assuming that the draughtsman was actually familiar with plants from nature, he might have gotten some of them perfectly right, some others he would give real components but not the ones that should belong together, and maybe in some cases he would have no idea and come up with some fantasy plant.
This would explain a few things.
Of course it can be an existing plant, but the fact that JKP could not find any fitting plant for this suggests that it may be some hybrid as described above.
However, there was also a proposed ID on Nick Pelling's forum by "Peter" who has been very active in finding matching plants for many of the pages.
So, of course, I don't know, but I find it an attractive idea.
Edit: w.r.t. the root, I do not find it exceptional.