Hidden animals in the roots

[Jorge_Stolfi]

What if the plants are some frankensteins built of parts of real plants?

The texts in the herbal may be coherent descriptions for a single plant. I have no firm idea whether that plant is real of imaginary,  European or not.

But I firmly believe that the plant illustrations in the Herbal are Frankenstein monsters with some parts copied from the Author's sketches (in particular, details that closely match Pharma drawings), some parts copied from random herbals (including "alchemist herbals"), some parts maybe copied from nature or from dried samples, and some parts just made up.   Except for the first case, the details are not related to the plant that is the subject of the text.

The drawings in the Pharma section may be of actual plants.  However, I believe that some of them are as would be obtained from a farmers' market or apothecary shop.  The roots with flat tops are cut away to show how they look inside (or at least that was the case in the source book that the Author got them from).  The plants with leaves that seem to sprout directly from the root are probably misunderstanding, by the Author or by us: the leaves and roots were supposed to be separate sketches of the important parts only.

The labels in the Pharma section may be names or codes of the plants in question.  However the text of pharma seems to be too short to be descriptions of those plants.  Maybe each parag describes a composite medicine created from the ingredients shown.

All the best, --stolfi