A and B plants

[david]

I had a very different approach once, which I abandoned because of time but I think still holds promise.
This is off the top of my head, trying to remember the original scheme.

I noticed that the forms of the plants seem to indicate what sort of plant they were.

We had four categories

• Trees (long straight stem between top and roots)
  
• Shrubs (short stem to roots, quite often the leaves have lots of little branches)
  
• Root crops (leaves straight out of roots)
  
• Creeping plants (usually indicated by several stems from leaves to roots)
  

I think all the plants I looked at could be slotted into these four categories, even the very small ones in the "pharmacy" pages.

Why was this useful to know?

Well, first off it indiciates the plants are based on some sort of taxonomy and not being drawn to whim.
It also indicates that the plants are being based on real life plants.
And it would also help narrow possible identifications if anyone wanted to know the modern name of the plant.

I have a half written draft paper (ah-hem: read blog post ) floating around in cyber-space, I really should go off and finish it.....