Just returning to this topic after being away.
JKP, you have far more plant knowledge that I so I'm not going to quibble with your assertions. As I said before, the veins on the leaves did make me pause for thought when proposing the basil identification. My ID was mainly based on the symbolism of the beast: basil / basilisk.
If we base the Dracaena ID on
symbolism then there are some issues there, which are worth going into for the background. I'm assuming most of us know the need to be careful when making the link between name and beast, but let's go through it again.
The first is that, as Diane points out, the name was given to the genus only within the last two centuries -
Dracaena Marginata for example was designated as such by Lamarck in 1786, and that was one of the earlier ones to be given the name. The name Dracaena means female dragon from the Greek, and came from the nickname of "Dragon Trees" because they produce a resin which is known as "dragon's blood". Not all members of the genus produce dragon's blood. The blood is the important thing we're concentrating on, as it was used in alchemy and medicine since Roman times. The plant names worked backwards from the dragon's blood resin.
So to link the symbolism of the beast with the plant we need to limit our analysis to a medieval interpretation - we need to narrow our search to those plants that would have been associated with the production of dragon's blood. For the purposes of this discussion we will assume that the VM scribe knew dragon's blood came from trees.
Dragon's blood is a red resin which is produced by certain plants (listed below). In antiquity, it was not recognised by the Romans as being a resin and was lumped in with certain minerals. By the late middle ages it was generally recognised as coming from different trees including (wikipedia here)
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Of these, only Dracaena looks anything like the VM plant.
Incidentally, I came across a Spanish account of the naming of Dragon Trees (dracaena). The myth, which appears to have been mentioned in Spanish sources when they were colonising the Canary Islands in the late 15th century, is that when Hercules killed Landon the multi headed dragon, from his blood sprang up multi-headed trees that were known as Dragon Trees. When they in turn were cut, they wept the blood of Landon (dragon's blood). Hence the symbology.
The antiquity of the plant's mythology is testified by their Spanish name which is still in use - the Canary trees are called
Sangre de Drago, or
Drago de Canarias. The word
drago is an antiquated version of
dragón , it fell out of use by the 1500's according the Spanish Corpus.
As I said above, dragon's blood is a resin that only comes from a few trees/plants. We moderns have extended the genus to several hundred types of plants, but there are only a very few plants that actually give dragon's blood, and would have been associated in the mind of the high middle ages botanist. In turn, there is only a subset which actually look like the plant depicted.
Now, I am less interested in the plant ID than I am in using it as a crib into the mindset of the scribe, which in turn may help in deciphering the text.
So, we can either ID the plant by symbolism (looking for a plant associated with a critter that looks like the one on the page) or by ignoring the beast and going for a basic plant ID. Let's sum up what we have:
Basil:
Creature: of basil / Basilisk (as explained in my original post)
Visual match: Not great
Geographical area: Anywhere
Plantago:
Creature: no link that I can think of
Visual match: Quite good
Geographical area: Anywhere
Dragon's Blood trees: From Wikipedia, a list of sources of dragon's blood, and I've struck through the ones that don't look anything like our VM plant.
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- Croton draconoides Müll. Arg.
- Croton draco Schltdl. & Cham.
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Müll. Arg.
- Croton erythrochilus Müll. Arg.
- Croton palanostigma Klotzsch
- Croton perspeciosus Croizat
- Croton rimbachii Croizat
- Croton sampatik Müll. Arg.
- Croton urucurana Baill.
- Croton xalapensis Kunth
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Blume
- Daemonorops didymophylla Becc.
- Daemonorops micranthus Becc.
- Daemonorops motleyi Becc.
- Daemonorops rubra (Reinw. ex Blume) Mart.
- Daemonorops propinquus Becc.
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Balf.f.
- Dracaena cochinchinensis Hort. ex Baker
- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (L.) L.
- Pterocarpus officinalis Jacq.
So we have narrowed our search to five plants. Any more?