The simplest plant

[-JKP-]

@JKP
You are right. You shouldn't rely on pictures alone.
You should know me by now enough that I wouldn't do that. There is a lot more to it.

One possibility is Polygonum aviculare. That would also be the one I showed.

The others you mention (I flew over them briefly), you should reconsider.
I think your work is a bit older and needs new evaluation.

No, I will stay with my opinion that  Polygonum aviculare, Peplis portula, Ammannia baccifera, and the ground-spreading Euphorbias are valid possibilities.

Euphorbia looks like the VMS plant. It grows along the ground, emanating out from the center, it has little tufts of pink flowers at the leaf nodes, it is common. There are three species of Euphorbia that particularly match the VMS drawing.




Here are bigger pics of Euphorbia (some have spots on the leaves, some of them don't) to show it better. They illustrate the growth habit, and the tufts of pink flowers at the leaf nodes:

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I am reasonably confident that the VMS illustrator was drawing the plant from above. I believe it is a ground-spreading plant. Notice that the roots are not shown because they are underneath (not visible).