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Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
- Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
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RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
crezac > 30-01-2016, 07:53 PM
(28-06-2015, 07:51 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have written a rather long post about whether or not it is worthwhile trying to work out the plants in the Voynich.
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I would be interested in what people think.
I think if you accept that the document isn't a fake then yes, it's actually possible to label them. This is true since a few of them seem to have labels, albeit not in a text I can read.
As to whether it's helpful to know what each plant is I think any information will improve the possibility of a translation. Not only does it provide context, but it gives sieve words for a brute force approach. But your other assumptions will determine how useful the knowledge of the plants is.
If you assume it's, for example, a nature guide, identifying the plants isn't helpful at all. Any plant could be in a nature guide the question becomes why these 30 or so. I didn't count, that's just an estimate -- and even if I had counted I can't be sure the same plant isn't illustrated more than once. My point is that unless you can show a geographic relationship between the plants or a similarity in habitat or some other commonality of nature then nature guide fails as a working hypothesis. Similarly if you assume a herbal and identify a dozen plants and half of them have no medicinal properties at all then the herbal is less likely.
Say that you're like me and your initial assumption is that VMS is an alchemical text of some sort. Page one is "Hey dudes, here's the secret to turning gold in to lead" or "Life extension for Dummies" or whatever, with a description of how the book breaks down. Part two is the ingredient list. Part three is the process. Part four theory. The rest is footnotes. I have to dig through manuscripts to see what alchemists put in their matresses and see if any of of the plant matter looks like anything in VMS. Fortunately for my theory alchemists were pretty out there anyway so they would probably use any plant as long as it had unusual properties or features.
So if I flip to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and look at the plant pictured there I note that the leaves are hairy. My initial impression is Drosea or Pinguicula; Sundew or Butterwort. The minimal root systems supports the idea of this being a carivorous plant. I assert the blue spots are insects stuck on the leaves (and I know there are lots of them, but seriously, I think the colorist was kind of a slob in places so maybe he just lacked restraint). If I could positively identify the plant as Pinguicula nevadensis (I don't think it is, this is just an example) it would restrict the author to someone who had knowledge of a very limited area in Spain. So knowing the plant would help a great deal in understanding the manuscripts possible purpose and origin.
That said, I don't think identification of all the plants will be possible without a translation and maybe not even then. The label may say something like Flemish Butterwort on a plant that has a label or it may just say it's found in the Frankish Alps or the Poggogan Alps. If we had a translation that wouldn't help because we don't have a modern equivalent. And if the plant ever existed it may have already been extinct by the time VMS was written. Rare plants with real or presumed medical value are foraged past sustainable levels. Ginseng became a commercial crop because the natural supply couldn't keep up with demand. Something that couldn't be cultivated wouldn't be as lucky.
You made the point that herbals were copied and recopied. The Dark Ages stifled most innovation and tradition stifled it long after they were over. The problem for us is that once innovation started up again the traditions weren't maintained. Few people today could tell you what adderwort is and even fewer could tell you it needs to be drawn with three snakes wrapped around the roots if it's in an herbal. But if we can figure out which tradition VMS fits into it would be a big help because text as well as images were copied and recopied, sometimes partially, sometimes in big chunks. (Maybe it's an alchemical tradition since Hermes had two serpents on his caduceus. Although I think a belief in spontaneous generation is more likely than Hermes.)
More generally on the images I'm not sure I trust that the colors are useful for identifying the plants. If I were searching the text for possible colors I wouldn't limit myself to just red, blue and green. And it seems unlikely that all blooms and berries are in these colors. I also wouldn't mind some CAT scans of the pages to see if there is detail under that color wash. See the blue on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for what I mean.
Final comment. Having people work on identifying the plants doesn't hurt anything. If you think it's a distraction, just don't let it distract you. There are going to be lots of theories expressed, rejected or modified before a generally accepted solution. Every person looking at the pictures is one more person who might eventually start working on the words too. -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
VViews > 30-01-2016, 11:22 PM
Hello Crezac,
in case you haven't come across it yet here's a link to Ellie Velinska's plant ID page.
I'm not sure if these are correct but it is very extensive and I especially like that for each plant she gives a map of the geographic areas where the plant is found:
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RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
EllieV > 31-01-2016, 12:56 AM
There are some plants in the VMs that were id-ed the same by different people at different times independently. While personal suggestions are vulnerable to criticism - the wisdom of the crowd that worked on the plants ids in the last 100 years (starting with Ethel Voynich, who consulted botanists about them) shows that at least some of the plants are not imaginary creatures, but actual plants that are even found in the old herbals.
My personal collection of plant ids is here - I made the list not because I think I am right, but because I hope that other researchers may find some useful ideas in it and come up with better ones in the future. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[url=http://ellievelinska.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-voynich-manuscript-plant-id-list.html][/url] -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
juergenw > 31-01-2016, 12:27 PM
(31-01-2016, 12:56 AM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My personal collection of plant ids is here - I made the list not because I think I am right, but because I hope that other researchers may find some useful ideas in it and come up with better ones in the future. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[url=http://ellievelinska.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-voynich-manuscript-plant-id-list.html][/url]
EllieV, Great list and collection. Is there a reason why you didn't include f25v? Plenty of opinions around, also on your blog, and it is discussed here now too (under 'discussion' is a thread on a suggestion for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as Mandrake).
I'd value your opinion if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is too complicated a case for plant ID... -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
EllieV > 31-01-2016, 04:47 PM
(31-01-2016, 12:27 PM)juergenw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 12:56 AM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My personal collection of plant ids is here - I made the list not because I think I am right, but because I hope that other researchers may find some useful ideas in it and come up with better ones in the future. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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EllieV, Great list and collection. Is there a reason why you didn't include f25v? Plenty of opinions around, also on your blog, and it is discussed here now too (under 'discussion' is a thread on a suggestion for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as Mandrake).
I'd value your opinion if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is too complicated a case for plant ID...
Hi juerenw, I believe the mandrake is one fol. 44r. Few people independently suggested that to me. Edith Sherwood suggested it. Does anybody knows who came up with the mandrake for 44r first? I have prepared images to post about it. It took me some time, but I think I have a story about it. In German the mandrake was called 'little hanged man' - it was believed that the mandrake root-person was formed by the hanged man's blood coming down the gallows - I think fol. 44r represents drops of blood coming down gallows beam (you can see the stem of the plant has edges like beam) - this is why the root-man is missing - it is still forming
[url=https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50]https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50
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RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
EllieV > 31-01-2016, 05:56 PM
(31-01-2016, 04:47 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 12:27 PM)juergenw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 12:56 AM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My personal collection of plant ids is here - I made the list not because I think I am right, but because I hope that other researchers may find some useful ideas in it and come up with better ones in the future. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[/url]
EllieV, Great list and collection. Is there a reason why you didn't include f25v? Plenty of opinions around, also on your blog, and it is discussed here now too (under 'discussion' is a thread on a suggestion for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as Mandrake).
I'd value your opinion if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is too complicated a case for plant ID...
Hi juerenw, I believe the mandrake is one fol. 44r. Few people independently suggested that to me. Edith Sherwood suggested it. Does anybody knows who came up with the mandrake for 44r first? I have prepared images to post about it. It took me some time, but I think I have a story about it. In German the mandrake was called 'little hanged man' - it was believed that the mandrake root-person was formed by the hanged man's blood coming down the gallows - I think fol. 44r represents drops of blood coming down gallows beam (you can see the stem of the plant has edges like beam) - this is why the root-man is missing - it is still forming [url=https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50]https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50
Hi David, the above mandrake example shows how studying the VMs plants may help with more info about the author and maybe the text. Another example - Traveler's joy points to Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland and the plant with rhombuses in its petals point to German speaking author. The text maybe Latin or other language of course, but I think German was one of the languages spoken by the author.
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RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
crezac > 01-02-2016, 08:32 PM
(26-07-2015, 02:40 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.David,
Since no-one else has added, may I say that I think it is worthwhile *after* you are confident that you know the sort of images you're dealing with.
And I'd add to Diane's observation that it's also important, and sometimes difficult, to remain objective in your identification. There are a number of people who have sites with "identifications", and even an app on the Google Play Store that claims to identify many of the plants. Looking through both there are some that have all the attributes of the drawing that I would call strong matches - although strong doesn't mean it can't also be wrong. There are others that bear a passing resemblance at best. Trying to do identify the image just to be the first one to throw out a suggestion isn't the best strategy -- asking a Ouija board for page numbers in Hortica would probably work as well. Assuming you're working with a herbal, plants from Mexico or limiting your search in some other way is probably a smarter move. But even there, if you get a few strong matches and a lot of partials it doesn't prove anything. And if you get a few strong matches and none of them have medicinal properties or come from Mexico you might want to start fresh.
Moving away from plants slightly, look at a few of the guides to wild mushrooms in a bookstore or library. One of the reasons for these books is that many mushrooms that are edible look very similar to others that are poisonous. This is true of books about plants too. One of the reason they are written is that many plants look very similar to each other. Our brains look for patterns so using a guide to mushrooms to train your brain to see patterns helps you avoid the toadstools. But it works both ways. If you had a big Swiss Cheese plant in the lobby at your first job or your grandmother had a water garden when you were growing up you'll see different patterns in the illustrations of VMS than a 14th-century German monk or a 15th-century Italian artist. Their experiences and culture will be different than yours so their brains are programmed differently.
These aren't new observations and they are pretty obvious anyway. The thing that needs some emphasis though is that you can't turn the little pattern matchers in your brain on and off., it's difficult to override them, and usually they do their thing without you even being aware of it. Rather than seek an "identification" it's probably better to say "this illustration has characteristics A,B,C,D and here's a list of plants with those characteristics or some of those characteristics." After you've done that for maybe 20% of the plant images you can start looking at all your possibilities and see what core commonalities you can find. If you don't you run the risk of being like the SETI researcher who wrote some software to scrub his raw data before looking for signals and when he was done not only did he not have a signal, he didn't have any data left either.
(31-01-2016, 05:56 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 04:47 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 12:27 PM)juergenw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-01-2016, 12:56 AM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My personal collection of plant ids is here - I made the list not because I think I am right, but because I hope that other researchers may find some useful ideas in it and come up with better ones in the future. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[/url]
EllieV, Great list and collection. Is there a reason why you didn't include f25v? Plenty of opinions around, also on your blog, and it is discussed here now too (under 'discussion' is a thread on a suggestion for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as Mandrake).
I'd value your opinion if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is too complicated a case for plant ID...
Hi juerenw, I believe the mandrake is one fol. 44r. Few people independently suggested that to me. Edith Sherwood suggested it. Does anybody knows who came up with the mandrake for 44r first? I have prepared images to post about it. It took me some time, but I think I have a story about it. In German the mandrake was called 'little hanged man' - it was believed that the mandrake root-person was formed by the hanged man's blood coming down the gallows - I think fol. 44r represents drops of blood coming down gallows beam (you can see the stem of the plant has edges like beam) - this is why the root-man is missing - it is still forming [url=https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50]https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f44r/0.5/0.5/2.50
Hi David, the above mandrake example shows how studying the VMs plants may help with more info about the author and maybe the text. Another example - Traveler's joy points to Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland and the plant with rhombuses in its petals point to German speaking author. The text maybe Latin or other language of course, but I think German was one of the languages spoken by the author.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
My suggestion for 44r would be tarragon. I believe the French for the name translates to "little dragon" which would explain why he's in the illustration. -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
VViews > 02-02-2016, 12:58 AM
"My suggestion for 44r would be tarragon. I believe the French for the name translates to "little dragon" which would explain why he's in the illustration."
You mean 25v I take it, the one with the dragon. I do like that interpretation!
Just to add though, fwiw:
The connection of tarragon with dragons does not come from french and the french "estragon" does not translate to "little dragon". It does refer to dragons though, but no mention of their size!
Tarragon/Estragon's etymology goes like this (please pardon my quick & messy presentation):
Borrowed from medieval latin tarcon, arabic altarcon (late xiith C., Gérard de Cremone), lat. bot. tarchon (1538, lat. translation of Siméon Seth De Cibariis ds NED tarragon), medieval greek. τ α ρ χ ο ́ ν (xies., Siméon Seth in Roll., loc. cit), from arabic tarh̬ūn (late ixth c., Razi; early xies., Avicenne in Devic) itself probably from classical greek δ ρ α κ ο ́ ν τ ι ο ν.
In French:
1539 targon (L. Duchesne, In Ruellium de stirpibus epitome ..., Paris, p. [16] : Tarco, from targon); 1564 estargon (Ch. Estienne, L'Agriculture et maison rustique, Paris, 1. II, chap. 25, p. 43a) : Targon, which the gardeners call estargon); 1601 estragon. -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
crezac > 02-02-2016, 01:53 AM
(02-02-2016, 12:58 AM)VViewYou m Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.ean 25v I take it, the one with the dragon. I do like that interpretation!
Just to add though, fwiw:
The connection of tarragon with dragons does not come from french and the french "estragon" does not translate to "little dragon".
Yes I meant 25v. The little dragon may come from Latin dracunculus . I just remember reading it back when I actually planted gardens. Thanks for catching my errors. -
RE: Is it worthwhile actually trying to identify the plants in the VM?
-JKP- > 02-02-2016, 03:16 AM
(28-06-2015, 07:51 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have written a rather long post about whether or not it is worthwhile trying to work out the plants in the Voynich.
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I would be interested in what people think. Obviously some people (such as Steve D on the Voynich mailing list) spend a lot of time and effort trying to identify the plants, but we never seem to get anywhere. Is it actually possible to label these plants? I would argue that it isn't.
I think it's a mistake to believe that drawings of only moderate quality, with no textual information to help, can be narrowed down to one specific plant.
Take the example of Elizabeth Blackwell's high quality drawings from a couple of centuries ago. Even a few of her drawings haven't been pinpointed by botanists as a specific species.
Many of the old herbal documents were never completed. The plants were drawn but not labeled. All the labels are in other hands and some are clearly wrong. There's a site that lists the Juliana Anicia plants and I don't know who did the identifications (perhaps students?) but many are clearly wrong even when there is information on the Internet leading to more accurate identifications, so those going back to other herbals to help them ID the VMS plants need to first check the accuracy of the original ID.
There are also cases where the illustrators themselves, ones who labeled their own plants, confused one plant with another and many cases where modern interpretations of old names is incorrect. For example, many plants in old herbals are labeled dittany (in various languages), but they didn't mean the plant we now call dittany. Several of the names applied to plants around the 9th and 10th centuries now refer to other plants. You have to understand the plant itself to match them up correctly.
The Plant List (an excellent resource that lists the taxonomically correct names of plants and their synonyms) includes many plants with "unresolved names". Some of the plants with unresolved names are represented by high quality drawings of the plant from old herbals and yet botanists cannot find a plant in nature that exactly matches. One possible reason for that is...
that some of the plants may be extinct, just as Sylphium (prized for its contraceptive properties in Roman times) became extinct due to overharvesting. Even if the plant exists, the specific species in the illustration may be gone and may never have been officially recorded by botanists before it died out.
I think it is worthwhile to try to "decipher" the plants in terms of understanding the drawings and trying to ID them, but those who are coming up with one ID for a plant are perhaps being optimistic—iit may be possible to narrow it down to between 2 or 5 plants in many instances, but rarely one. They do not contain enough detail.