I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS

[JustAnotherTheory]

Perhaps a sign of forgery?

Forgery of what?

I could ask the same question if it was NOT a forgery. Why ecrypt a herbal? It makes no (apparent) sense.

In my opinion, a general confusion across experts is a sign that the object being studied might not be a true historic artifact. 

Of course, this is just my opinion, but when an MS from the early 15th century (when the vast majority of people were much restricted to travel), contains visual elements from literally every single country in Europe, every single tradition, ranging from England, Spain, France, Germany to Italy, from Michael Scot, Nicolas Oresme to Mariano Taccola, not to mention the apparent weird connections to Syrian ciphers in MS LSJ51 and obscure herbals from the Netherlands like MS 02.48, it is more likely (to me, at least) that this object in question is a creation of one or more forgers, rather than a true 1400s manuscript from Paduan peasants in the illiterate countryside from whence the carbon dating and animal provenance apparently suggest.

A forgery of what? It doesn't matter what. The point is that it might have been made to impress someone with a lot of money who was into this stuff. Cough cough Rudolf II, etc etc. You get the idea.