[split] Roots and Eagle heraldry

[MarcoP]

This is probably off-topic, since it is not about heraldry. Zoomorphic elements are rather frequent in late medieval herbals. They are typically caused by one of two reasons:

1. the name of the plant is similar to the name of an animal;
   
2. a part of the plant is similar to an animal.
   

An example of the first case is provided by Herba Corporelis  / Corborellis (crow-plant) from the Alchemical Herbal. Segre-Rutz identifies the plant as Hepatica Nobilis, but I am not aware of dialects naming the plant after crows.
   


Several examples of the second case can be seen in Trinity O.2.48, where the text describes parts of the plant as similar to "a swallow", "stork's beaks", "bird's heads" and the illustrator took these analogies very literally.
   


Adding to the ongoing speculation, one can observe that 'eagle' is 'aquila' in both Italian and Latin, so maybe (at the light of case 1 above) 'aquilegia' could not be totally impossible for f46v.
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According to Albertus Magnus the name aquilegia was taken from aquila, the Latin for “eagle.”