(25-03-2020, 03:12 PM)Mark Knowles wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't say that it looks like the drawings that I have see of squirting cucumbers. I am inclined to the view that these are not part of the plants, but objects attached to the ends of leaves.
I've seen a lot of medieval drawings of squirting cucumber and they are basically drawn like that with bumpy edges and a row of dots along the side.
Some included flowers, some didn't, but what one notices when one grows cucumber or squash is the way the flowers stay around, on the end of the fruiting body, even after the cucumber has grown a few inches. Assuming it's a literal depiction, this might be what the drawing is trying to express.
I'm pretty sure the one that looks like a squirting cucumber is different from the others. The first image you posted has the petals at the ends of leaves rather than at the ends of a fruiting body. The bottom one has the petals at the end of the fruiting body. Don't forget, it's the core of the flowers that turn into fruit/seeds, so it's not anomalous to see both.
It's also not uncommon to see things that look like petals at the ends of leaves in tiered rows. There are many plants that don't actually have petals, what they have is modified colored leaves that look like petals but are structurally more similar to leaves (except they have color and a different size and sometimes even a slightly different shape, but they are not petals).
The drawings are a bit stylized but they really aren't far from what mother nature invents. The top drawing has captured the structure of the stalk very well.