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[ChrisHagen]

Such a single unit leaf is hardly can stand alone in the air.

I agree. And it's not just that. Many of the VMS plants look fantastic and imaginary, but this one really is an impossible feat of botany.


Taking the drawing at face value, the roots are probably the only realistic part of the plant (counter to many other plants, where the roots take on impossible shapes!) But it stops right at the root. Continuing upwards, we immediately see two flowers emerging from the root stem, right at the surface of the earth. The flowers seem to not yet be fully open - or perhaps they are in a post-blooming state, about to wither into seed pods.

The main plant stem continues straight up and then seemingly splits into three; with two stems in the foreground each terminating in similar pre- or post-bloom flowers, and a third, hidden stem in the background growing into this huge fern-like leaf shaped exactly like the fletching of an arrow.

With all this being said as a prelude: Yes! I do agree that the little shapes in the leaf resemble mosquito pupae.

I have for long had a difficult time accepting plant identifications made by simply comparing the actual botanical aspects. I like the idea of the drawings being just as encrypted as the text, with the drawings of the plants serving more like mnemonic devices than something meant to identify the plants by.

I do still find this to be a difficult angle of attack. Even if we, just for sake of argument, imagined that we were 100% sure that the drawing represented mosquitoes and arrows, where would that leave us? We could find mosquitoes in other manuscripts, look at the history of arrow fletching, but I can't see it getting us anywhere. We can't know how the author intended the mnemonic to be interpreted. Maybe he was just using it for the first letter of every word, to remember the syllables of the plant? Or was he connecting the elements in his mnemonics with stories from Greek culture like sometimes suggested (i.e. satyrs, priapus, mosaic etc. etc.) ? There's an ocean of possibilities, and not even knowing the language that the devices are meant to be interpreted in, that just further multiplies the research tracks to follow.

I keep following the discussion on this mysterious little book and its contents. It's been over 10 years since I first heard about it. And I keep having the idea that more tests need to be done on the physical manuscript before we can learn more... Many more ink samples could tell us so much. But alas - in my dreams!