It is well known that the Voynich herbal pages can be classified into two distinct groups based on the characteristics of the text, termed the Currier A and B languages. I know there is no sharp division but rather a continuum, but the herbal pages seem to group at both the two extremes of it rather than in the middle (see René Zandbergen's You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. on this). There also seems to be a correlation with the appearance of the handwriting.
However, I haven't found anyone mentioning consistent differences between the plant illustrations on A and B pages. So this is a paradox, where sections that appear to refer to the same subject have text with very different properties. The only explanation I've seen is that of Nick Pelling, who claims in his book that the B plants look much less naturalistic (which may be true, but is hard to quantify, and many A plants are not very naturalistic either), and suggests that they are actually hidden drawings of machines. However, this seems not very convincing, and I don't think it has been generally accepted.
I think I've found a feature that differs between A and B plants. Namely, in many plants, the stem is separated from the root by a horizontal line. This occurs in "grafted" plants, where the stem is placed on a much thicker root that appears to have been cut off (but not in all of them), but also in ones where the stem and the root have the same thickness. With one exception, this only appears in plants where the text is Currier A.
The following pages have "grafted" plants with such lines: f3v, f6r, f7r, f9r, f11r, f13r, f14r, f16r, f16v, f19v, f22v, f23r, f36r, f37v, f44v, f45r, f45v, You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. (?), f54v, f57r, f90r2, f93v. With the exception of f54v, these are all Currier A. Not that You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. is quite exceptional anyway, as it is on a bifolio (autocorrect thinks I mean "buffalo") that includes both herbal and text-only pages, which I think is unique.
In the following pages, the plant does not look grafted, but the line is there: f5r, f5v, f7v, f8v, f13v, f27r, f28r, f30v, f32v, f38r, f38v, f47r, f47v, f65v, f87r, f87v, f90v1, f90v2. These are all Currier A.
In the following pages, the plants are "grafted", but there is no line separating the stem(s) from the root: f26r, f39r, f39v, f48r, f55r, f65r, f95r1, f95r2, f95v1. These are all Currier B.
There are of course non-grafted plants without such a line, which occur in both A and B.
So this doesn't resolve the paradox, Herbal-A and B pages still both depict plants, but there seems to be at least a difference between them. Has anyone else noticed this, or other differences? If so, I would be interested to know.