The right-shifting tendencies of VM plants are remarkable indeed. This might be our best indication that the inclusion of text was planned.
When I wrote about this five years ago, I apparently noted that very few entire paragraphs are placed right of the plant. And in the rare cases when this happens, the text still remains left aligned:
A similar behavior can be seen on You are not allowed to view links.
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The only place where I see the scribe get into trouble in this regard is You are not allowed to view links.
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As far as I can see, You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. places its plants much more in the middle, but it does also avoid starting a paragraph to the right of the plant. The Vienna Dioscurides (JAC) also has its plants more in the middle. Some pages have the (later) text nicely to the left of the plant though.
Edit: by the way, the VM is more consistent with its layout strategy than many other herbal manuscripts. This consistency along across several scribes should tell us
something. But what exactly that something should be, is probably up for discussion.