[Essentials] List of relevant herbal manuscripts?

[Bernd]

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and derivatives are a rabbit hole.
There is a whole family tree of related herbals on the Wikipedia page.

   

I found it interesting that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1350) was written in Occitane. Has anyone checked if the dialect matches the VM month names? The illustrations do not seem to be a particularly good match to the VM.

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Mid-15th century) Kräuterbuch however has some interesting characteristics regarding imagery including many plants with leaves only on one side while the opposite one is omitted, 'cancelled' stems that have also been omitted, different leaf shapes on the same plant and some interesting 'whirlwind' Asteraceae.

   

Page 64 also depicts a plant (Ruscus?) that somewhat matches VM You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

   

It's a shame the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Mid-15th century) was sold to  a private collector withoutr being digitized. The manuscript also contained the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which sounds interesting.

Regarding the original You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1280 - 1350) it is again stated that the plant illustrations came from different sources and were of widely differing uality depending on the availability of the live plant.

At least three stylistic groups of plants can be distinguished. 
1) Trees and shrubs from overseas or "the Indies", such as the incense tree, whose products reached Europe in dried form, are illustrated with images that bear no resemblance to their natural appearance. They are characterized by clean, fine lines and careful application of paint, and are well framed in the space of the column reserved for them. 
2) Familiar trees such as the fig tree, with their more recognizable leaf shapes, are marked by a freer, bolder use of paint, and a more sketchy, less delicate style. 
3) Finally, common aromatic herbs such as coriander or chervilare depicted in a more precise, smaller and more schematic way. These groups suggest that the artists worked from sets of drawings, some invented for unknown plants, others composed of characteristic features but without proportion, and still others drawn from nature.

With regard to this third group, Felix Baumann suspects that the often two-dimensional representations of plants are based on pressed originals. The leaves of wild chicory, which are naturally arranged in a rosette around the stem, are thus represented in a star shape as if they were a flattened specimen. However, the first evidence of the herbarium technique, collections of dried plants, is only known from the 16th century onwards, and if true, this hypothesis would bring the discovery forward by almost two centuries.