[Other] The Voynich Garden

[asteckley]

Don't just think about plants, try to see the whole.

No one is saying that you shouldn't think about the wider problem.  But that is a separate activity from identifying what the best plant identification is for a particular plant illustration.

If a particular illustration looks 80% like a particular American plant but it also looks 70% like a European plant, then yes --  one should probably bet on it being the European plant because of all the additional evidence that the manuscript is European.

On the other hand, if it looks 95% like an American plant, but the best match to a European plant is only about 60%, then one may have to face the fact that something about the European assumption might be flawed.  (And if 80% of the plants in the manuscript look more like American plants than their best European option, then one is in even more of a pickle to reconcile the conflicting evidence.) 

But to say at the outset that American plants can't be right is a confirmation bias that one should avoid.
The best way to avoid that confirmation bias is to first treat each illustration on its own merits and ask 'what plant(s) are the main contenders for what this illustration most resembles, regardless of other factors outside the illustration itself".