Compound plants in the VMS ?

[Koen G]

I would be surprised if compounding plant images existed as a systematic practice. There must certainly be individual examples, where one could say something like "the draughtsman drew plant a, but for some reason drew flowers that look more like plant b". But those would probably be more like one-off compounds or simply accidents.

Imaginary plants certainly exist in herbals (the wonderful Trinity College manuscript we discussed long ago comes to mind), but those would be inaccurately described as "compound plants". They are just plants that don't exist, or that look completely different in real life.


As for the VM, I foresee various discussions about semantics, and opinions based on a few folios.

Someone who is of the opinion that "all this compound talk is nonsense" may point to some of the more obvious plant ID's that have been discussed over the years. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. lists about eight plants where the general opinion seemed to agree about a specific botanical identification. But this leaves the vast majority of plants in the "problematic" category.

Another might say that many of the plants are compounds, but what do they mean by this? Representations of actual horticultural practices like grafting? Artistic compounds of existing plants, based on some kind of classification? Parts of real plants combined with fantasy parts? Mostly fantasy parts which at times take inspiration from actual herbals?

It's a whole continuum of possibilities which is difficult to narrow down and might even vary from folio to folio.