f18v...Dioscorides...something about those leaves

[Bernd]

These are good findings, Koen. I still wonder at what point pareidolia takes over so we have to be careful. But overall the VM plants do appear to have at least some Dioscorides DNA.

Flowers and roots are completely different though.

I am more and more leaning toward the hypothesis that many VM flowers were added independently. I would not call them 'fake' but probably the artist's own invention. Same with many roots but they rather appear to have been copied from another source.

Further observations:
If our hypothesis of a partial Dioscorides source for the VM is correct we can observe some odd things:
.) certain details were copied but not the overall plant
.) the stem part was copied independently from roots and flowers
.) roots have better matches in later medieval herbals
.) odd details like stem loops, weird flowers or the 'eldritch horror' pods of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were added, either deliberately or out of a lack of understanding of plant anatomy. Many herbals have weird plants but the VM beats them by a mile.
This also matches glitches like Aries nibbling on the tree that was originally in the background or using a marriage couple as Gemini.

The 1 million dollar question is - why?