12-10-2016, 12:22 PM
VViews,
yes, I agree that lots of people thought the botanical images senseless "bits and pieces" of different plants - and also that many speculated vaguely about some of the pictures showing grafting.
It is telling, however, that the first time I deconstructed one of the botanical folios, identifying not only each of the plants, but explaining how those chosen for inclusion related to each other in terms of habitat, and practical/economic uses, and also explained that the constructions were along rational and systematic lines: that there was a basic template.. not a single person said other than that the idea was ridiculous. No, sorry - Nick Pelling referred me to one phrase in Tiltman's paper, repeated by d'Imperio.
And for the next several years, as I was demonstrating how these images work, everyone - I mean everyone - kept hammering the idea that the botanical folios were part of the Latin herbal tradition, and identifying just one plant as the subject of each image. Idle speculations from eight years before I came to the manuscript - speculations never investigated or demonstrated valid - don't count for much, especially when ignored by the same people who now seem so eager to find excuses to adopt the idea.
Same goes for the 'grafting' notion. It isn't the reason the image is constructed so. The white circumscription line signals a plant which is .. tamed - one under cultivation. The cut-bole indicates a plant used for its wood; rapid-springing young shoots tell you that the plant regenerates rapidly. That is a conclusion drawn after identifying the plants which are referenced by the drawing.
But as you like..
yes, I agree that lots of people thought the botanical images senseless "bits and pieces" of different plants - and also that many speculated vaguely about some of the pictures showing grafting.
It is telling, however, that the first time I deconstructed one of the botanical folios, identifying not only each of the plants, but explaining how those chosen for inclusion related to each other in terms of habitat, and practical/economic uses, and also explained that the constructions were along rational and systematic lines: that there was a basic template.. not a single person said other than that the idea was ridiculous. No, sorry - Nick Pelling referred me to one phrase in Tiltman's paper, repeated by d'Imperio.
And for the next several years, as I was demonstrating how these images work, everyone - I mean everyone - kept hammering the idea that the botanical folios were part of the Latin herbal tradition, and identifying just one plant as the subject of each image. Idle speculations from eight years before I came to the manuscript - speculations never investigated or demonstrated valid - don't count for much, especially when ignored by the same people who now seem so eager to find excuses to adopt the idea.
Same goes for the 'grafting' notion. It isn't the reason the image is constructed so. The white circumscription line signals a plant which is .. tamed - one under cultivation. The cut-bole indicates a plant used for its wood; rapid-springing young shoots tell you that the plant regenerates rapidly. That is a conclusion drawn after identifying the plants which are referenced by the drawing.
But as you like..