Compound plants in the VMS ?

[-JKP-]

Many plants are very similar, so the drawings may be similar even if they are not the same plants ... Medieval herbals sometimes include two or three plants of the same family that are very similar.

In your experience JKP, when this occurs, are these illustrations typically all found on the same page or nearby?

Also, on a related note, how commonly have you seen a medieval herbal include multiple hard-to-distinguish plant drawings in close proximity, which actually have nothing taxonomic or practical in common? (I’ve been thinking a lot about Herbal B with this second question; more on that later.)

Yes, they are often on the same page or nearby. Not always, but ones like bugloss are often near one another (e.g., dyer's bugloss and the more common bushy bugloss). Comfrey is often near bugloss, as well.

There are also many that have the same name or a similar growth pattern that are grouped but which are not related taxonomically. One example is the common English daisy and primrose. In fact, some of the old herbals call the daisy by the name "primrose" (a name that has mostly been dropped in favor of English daisy). They are often pictured together (or close to each other), but they are not related. So why put them together? They have similar growth habits, they are often found in grassy lawns or fields, they both have a basal whorl. The main difference is that the daisy prefers a little more sun.

Two additional plants that are frequently placed together (or nearby) are plants they called oxalis, the shade kind that looks like a giant shamrock (which now has the botanial name of Oxalis), and sheep sorrel, which has fish-shaped leaves (which resembles You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the VMS). They don't look alike and sorrel prefers sun, so they don't grow in the same areas either. I had to read the text to figure out why they associated them and it has to do with their slight acidity (I assume they were referring to taste). Both were used medicinally, and sorrel was and still is used as a salad green.


In other words, they had various ways of associating plants. Sometimes by shape, sometimes by taste, sometimes by use, and occasionally by taxonomic similarity. A lot of this association goes out of the window when plants are organized alphabetically, especially if they were organized by vernacular names (which were considerably different in various languages). But... many of them used the Latin names and some of these were adapted by Linnaeus when he standardized the nomenclature.