Are we taking the pictures too literally?

[MarcoP]

To put it another way, if the VM simply recombined parts of existing plants, it would still not look as bizarre as it does. Even if it combines parts of different plants in some occasions (maybe it does, I don't know), it seems clear to me that one or more other transformative principles have a greater impact on our inability to identify the plants.

And all this does not apply to the Voynich manuscript only, but to most medieval herbals (in different degrees). Trinity O.2.48 is a case in which both mixing parts of different plants and adding non-vegetal elements is taken as far as in the VMS.