The Thing as compared to the Other Thing

[MarcoP]

Right, the motifs are interesting by their own, even if they may not explain anything about the VM. 

What do you find the best explanation for the "Things", Marco?

Hi Koen,
back in 2015, I posted on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. an idea similar to Searcher's comment You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

   

While I still see some similarity with poppy pods, I am now much less sure that the similarity is significant.
In my opinion, a good interpretation of this or any other detail should be part of an interpretation of the whole of Q13. This has been rarely attempted and all attempts are somehow weak. For instance, in my 2015 comment I mentioned You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Their article is certainly interesting, but it shows no medieval images that could support their ideas: this seriously undermines their conclusions.

To my knowledge, in recent years the only addition to the scholarly study of Q13 has been Rampling's "Alchemical Traditions" essay in the 2016 Yale facsimile. She clearly summarizes the situation (p.46):

Unlike the herbal and astronomical diagrams, [the illustrations in the so-called biological or balneological section] have no obvious parallel among other genres of late medieval imagery. [...] in the absence of either accompanying legible text or a clear parallel in medieval art, one guess is merely as good as another.

We know that, though some herbals provide decent parallels for Voynich plants, they are not good enough to identify a single plant with any certainty. Similarly, the zodiac in the astrological pages is recognizable, but this is more or less all we are certain about. Q13 is even worse.

Sadly, since "one guess is as good as another", we are not in a position to pick a single "best" idea. Our hopes are either to decipher Voynichese (and make the text legible) or to miraculously find somewhere an illustration cycle that closely parallels Q13.