The incredible unravelling of the Voynich Manuscript

[-JKP-]

Sigh... his plant IDs are way off base. I find this depressing to read.

The flower doesn't match, the calyx doesn't match, the growth pattern of the flowerhead doesn't match, and the leaves don't match.

Four strikes.


Weiler compares a fairly good drawing of Centaurea (with a thistle-like calyx and groups of lanceolate leaves), You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , with an umbellate plant with palmate leaves and then, with complete confidence, says they are the same. There's no similarity between them.

Then he goes on and on about umbellifers.

The VMS plant is not an umbellifer. You don't have to be a botanist to see that. Any avid gardener can recognize the difference and would notice the scaly calyx as the Centaurea or thistle group of plants. Even the spot inside each scale on the calyx is specific to several species of Centaurea.

Here's one of the Centaureas with (mostly) lanceolate leaves:



Many plants have red stems (one of the key ingredients to Weiler's ID). Some of them have red stems at certain times of the year also.