The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

What don't you understand about this plant?
They are all European plants and they all occur in the same region. Most of them even grow right outside my front door.
I have now given so many examples that even you must slowly realise that they are real.
What was said 40 years ago is bullshit.

First, neither of those two plants is a perfect match.

Sanguisorba officinalis:  

• The flowers are completely wrong.  In the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.., the red cylinder is an inflorescence, a bundle of very small flowers, with petals only 1-2 mm long, that bloom gradually from the base up.  In the VMS drawing, the flowers grow singly on each branch; each flower has a large oval calyx and a corolla of largish petals.
  
• The leaves are indeed similar, in that they are triangular and have serrated edges.  But on the VMS picture they are fused in pairs around the stem, whereas those of the real S.off. are separated.
  
• The roots are a good match to those shown on that herbal image, except that the latter are not hairy. However, that herbal does not seem to match You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., nor this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  
  

Filipendula vulgaris:

• The flowers of the VMS drawing do not look like the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., not at all. 
  
• The leaves are vaguely similar only to the point that they have many fingers, each with many teeth.  But the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a long plume with a dozen or more fingers, each a separate leaflet, placed alternately along the central stalk.  Those of the VMS drawing are short, with only half a dozen fingers, all fused together.  Also the real leaves radiate out from the base of the plant in a rather compact bundle, while those of the VMS drawing grow from branches up high.
  
• The roots are a fairly good match, although the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seem to generally have only one tuber on each branch, and long thin branches between and beyond the tubers.
  

Now, you will argue that the discrepancies are due to intraspecies variation, and/or to lack of artistic ability by the scribe, and/or to him copying the plants from herbals that are copies of copies of ... instead of from nature.  And I would even concede that some discrepancies, like the triangular spikes on the flowers of the F.vulg. drawing, are not original but fanciful additions by a later Retracer.

But if we must allow for discrepancies of that magnitude in order to get a match, then in any comparison of a hundred random plant drawings to thousands of European medicinal species we will get dozens of false positives -- apparent matches between drawings and plants that in fact have nothing to do with each other.

Second,  those two plants above, and the few plants that I accept as convincing matches (f2r Nymphaea, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Viola tricolor) grow natively all over Eurasia, including China.  So, even if we accept those matches, they are not evidence of "European Origin".  Are there matches of plants that grow only in Europe?

And Third, even if there are matches for VMS Herbal plants that only grow on Europe, it only proves that those drawings were copied from European herbals.  But the Frankenstein Herbal Theory (which is independent of the Chinese Origin Theory) says that each VMS herbal drawing consists of one or two details copied from the same source as the Pharma drawings, with the rest being invented or copied from European herbals, realistic or "alchemical" (fictional).   

The arguments for the FHT include the exact match between some details of Herbal plants with drawings of Pharma, the fantastic features of some VMS Herbal plants (like converging branches), and apparent partial matches of some VMS Herbal figures with drawings on some alchemical herbals.  What are the arguments against the FHT?

All the best, --stolfi