RE: Barry and Joshua Summers, "Voynich: Pattern Searching and Statistical Analysis"
-JKP- > 05-12-2020, 09:02 AM
"... our idea was to find some word for blue...."
Except in a few instances (maybe Viola), I think it's unlikely that the color blue represents the color of the flower. The VMS palette is limited and blue has not been blended as much as the greens.
White, yellow, red, orange, and pink are very common colors for flowers and yet there's limited use of red, no yellow or orange, no pink, almost no white. The blue is probably symbolic and many of the blue structures are drawn like seeds rather than flowers, so searching for the word "blue" on folios with blue flowers or seeds is unlikely to yield anything useful.
Also, in medieval books of plants, if the purpose of the drawing was to identify the plant, then the most significant parts were mentioned (but not always all of them, sometimes it was only the ones that were particularly recognizable for that plant). If the purpose was to show medicinal plants (which was the purpose of the majority of medieval books of plants), often only the medicinal parts were mentioned.
We don't know if either of these purposes apply to the VMS, but it makes it difficult to search for specific plant-related words because even if the drawing has it, it's not necessarily mentioned in the text.