A and B plants

[Bernd]

I think it's a bit more nuanced.
The important message is that the imagery appears to behave very much like the text. There is a pretty clear distinction between Currier A and B, but there are also more subtle subdivisions. There similarly is a correlation between Imagery and scribal hands (I'm saying Hands, not Scribes on purpose). You know I'm not a fan of the multi-scribe hypothesis and I would also agree with you that the 'hands' are the result of progress of a single individual over time. Te imagery shows too many common elements between scribal hands to have been created by multiple individuals. Yet there is an artistic progress. In my opinion, the artist started with Hand1, copying diligently from a source. Many of the more realistic A plants appear to be Dioscorides copies, a source which probably had the most life-like plants of its time. The Viola is a special case and I believe the artist drew it from a cut (slightly limp) or pressed plant. Viola arvensis can be found in residential areas, in stark contrast to many other of the plants in classical herbals (many of which might never have been encountered in nature by a Middle European). If we consider the oddities of the VM in both art and writing, I have long been wondering if the artist grew up confined and isolated from nature, either due to illness or imprisonment. Which would explain oddities like the stem loops and odd plants in general.

Also note that there is a similar correlation between scribal hands and faces which I have shown here. This also shows a bridge from Hand1 (Pharma) to Hand4 (Cosmo).
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I believe the artist got bolder towards Hand2 and finally Hand33 which shows a distinct and more abstract art style, both in plants and humans. Some plants were drawn by several hands, in different styles, for whatever reason. If we accept a single artist hypothesis, this however begs the question why this artist chose to continue drawing more plants in Herbal B after he finished Herbal A.
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I would also agree that the VM probably has a non-linear and more complex history with the author overworking and adding parts after he was finished. Yet the vast majority of text and imagery appears to have been created in one go. Which is why we see the stylistic differences between scribal hands.