For people interested in this topic, I can only recommend to read the book:
Collins, Minta: Medieval herbals: the illustrative traditions , British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, 2000.
This explains many of these points: how herbals could have various different purposes, and the (lack of) quality in their illustrations.
That the illustrations should be there to aid the reader in better recognising the plant, is a completely normal thought for us modern people, but this was not the case at the beginning of the 15th century.
Plenty of herbals were not illustrated, but these are never mentioned in Voynich discussions, for obvious reasons.
Collins, Minta: Medieval herbals: the illustrative traditions , British Library Studies in Medieval Culture, 2000.
This explains many of these points: how herbals could have various different purposes, and the (lack of) quality in their illustrations.
That the illustrations should be there to aid the reader in better recognising the plant, is a completely normal thought for us modern people, but this was not the case at the beginning of the 15th century.
Plenty of herbals were not illustrated, but these are never mentioned in Voynich discussions, for obvious reasons.