f65R any identifications?

[ReneZ]

The plant illustration on folio 65r turns out to be an excellent example of one of the typical problems of plant identification in historical manuscripts. I use 'historical' to include anything from antiquity up to the invention of photography.

Accurate and life-like illustrations of plants only started to appear during the lifetimes of Brunfels and Fuchs, i.e. the middle of the 16th century.

Let me include two clips from the top of the plant on f65r.

On the right:

   

and on the left:

   

On the right-hand side, the branches are 'opposite'. On the left-hand side they are 'alternating'.

Now plants can have one or the other, but not both. It is one of the standard criteria for identifying them.

Whoever made the drawing in the Voynich MS was not copying this accurately from a specimen.

I have not searched for this 'problem' systematically in the MS, but I was struck by the clear example on this folio.