F17r plant: Alkanna Tinctoria?

[ReneZ]

I would also like to raise an uncomfortable question:
What is the point of illustrations in a herbal?
From an utilitarian point - there is none. Dioscorides himself complained that physicians do not care about botany. And frankly why would they? Physicians were not expected to go out and harvest herbs, this was considered an inferior task. Physicians bought dried herbs or herbal preparations. Knowing what the plant looked like in vivo was not necessary. Indeed the original Dioscorides is believed to have been lacking any illustrations. The marvelous paintings were only added much later in manuscripts that targeted a bibliophile and rich audience of nobles, not physicians that could never afford such books.

Perhaps an uncomfortable question, but crucially important.

In our modern mindsets, we are so used to the idea that illustrations are there to clarify things, that it is hard to think otherwise.

Nowadays, adding illustrations just to make a publication look better is considered bad practice.
(Similar to adding lots of equations to one's powerpoint presentation just to make it look more impressive - but I digress into a different set of disciplines).

We should not look at the illustrations in the MS as trying to help identify the plant. We cannot be sure why they are there, but NOT to explain what the plant looked like.
Quite possibly just to beautify or to impress.