Can... : Transcriptions

[-JKP-]

R. Sale, maybe there's a plant that is better than Cannabis. Even though it's a probable ID, the problem with Cannabis is that it had many different names and many different spellings of those names.

So, are there other options? Yes, there may be.

Alternate Plant IDs

There are two plants you might want to consider. One is Centaurea (f2r), the other is Calendula (f18r).

These IDs are also disputed (partly by me), but they are less controversial than most of them.

• I think it is possible to ID the VMS plant that looks like Centaurea down to the binomial because the elliptical shape of the leaves has been emphasized and there are only a few species of Centaurea that have the elliptical leaves together with the distinctive spots on the scaly part below the petals. It's my opinion that f2r might be Centaurea jacea. Even if it is not C. jacea, it is probably Centaurea.
  
• The other one is Calendula. There is a good drawing of what might be Calendula on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . The illustrator has captured the proportions, the petals, and the budding to the sides very well. Almost everyone who knows plants says Calendula for this drawing, and it's provisionally at the top of my list. The only reason I am not 100% sure it is Calendula is because there is a mountain aster that is shaped almost exactly like Calendula, but which has blue flowers instead of yellow. I don't think the flower colors in the VMS are literal. Blue has been chosen for most of them including plants that don't usually have blue flowers, so there's no way to know if it is Calendula or a blue aster without some other clue (e.g., in the text).
  

There are three advantages in selecting these plant drawings:

• Both are reasonably naturalistic and reasonably well drawn.
  
• Both Centaurea and Calendula are commonly included in medieval plant books (both illustrated and unillustrated). They were considered medicinal plants. 
  
• Both Centaurea and Calendula have relatively stable names (most of the time this is what they are labeled, and the medieval spelling for these plants did not vary as much as other plants), which might be easier to deal with than Cannabis, which had many different names/spellings.
  

Caveats

I am strongly of the opinion that the VMS text is not a one-to-one substitution code. But, I am perfectly happy to point to resources if they are useful to anyone for looking for relationships between the drawings and text (whatever the text may be).