It wasn't Bax who identified Centaurea.
That was one of the generally accepted IDs at the time (almost as well accepted as Viola). Even without looking at the text, the ID of Centaurea is less controversial than others. It looks like Centaurea jacea (brown knapweed).
Plus, the VMS label very nearly says Centaurea in Latin. In fact, in Latin, it is closer than it is in Arabic, and it was Arabic (or a similar Middle Eastern language) that Bax was suggesting was the underlying language.
I would not be surprised if some of the plants turned out to be Mediterranean plants (Ricinis, for example, is not tolerant of cold weather and prefers warmer climates), but I would be extremely surprised if they were tropical. There's no sign that they are tropical. All the more naturalistic ones are temperate-zone plants, not tropical plants, and even the odder ones do not have the usual botanical earmarks of tropical plants.
The "water lily" doesn't have to be Nymphoides indica, there is also a European Nymphoides and there is frogbit, which is very similar. If it is one of the Vallarsia, Menyanthes species (which is what it looks like), then it is circumboreal and can't really be pinned down to any particular continent without corroborating information from the text or other plants around it.
That was one of the generally accepted IDs at the time (almost as well accepted as Viola). Even without looking at the text, the ID of Centaurea is less controversial than others. It looks like Centaurea jacea (brown knapweed).
Plus, the VMS label very nearly says Centaurea in Latin. In fact, in Latin, it is closer than it is in Arabic, and it was Arabic (or a similar Middle Eastern language) that Bax was suggesting was the underlying language.
I would not be surprised if some of the plants turned out to be Mediterranean plants (Ricinis, for example, is not tolerant of cold weather and prefers warmer climates), but I would be extremely surprised if they were tropical. There's no sign that they are tropical. All the more naturalistic ones are temperate-zone plants, not tropical plants, and even the odder ones do not have the usual botanical earmarks of tropical plants.
The "water lily" doesn't have to be Nymphoides indica, there is also a European Nymphoides and there is frogbit, which is very similar. If it is one of the Vallarsia, Menyanthes species (which is what it looks like), then it is circumboreal and can't really be pinned down to any particular continent without corroborating information from the text or other plants around it.