Hartlieb's herbal and 'Hundszunge'

[ReneZ]

In  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  I mentioned the copy of the herbal of Hartlieb preserved in Berlin in the Staatsbibliothek:
Ms. germ. qu. 2021, from 1462.

One illustration immediately struck me, namely the one of  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (dog's tongue).

While the leaves are drawn in such a basic manner that it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusions,
the similarity with Voynich MS  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  is still striking in my opinion.
This is of course especially the case since the roots of the plant in the Voynich MS could by all means
represent a dog.

[Koen G]

The root could be seen as a dog, though I think the claws and tip of the tail point towards a feline.

The leaves do look similar, though those in the VM plant have a straight base instead of a curved one. This could be due to the condition of the original specimens, or a degree of abstraction in their depiction.

What makes this identification very unlikely though, is the arrangement of the leaves. Those in the VM plant are arranged like those of liquorice, for example, even though their shape is different.



Looking at the flowers, their shape does not remind me of any Cygnoglossum species. The color is close to that of C. amabile, native to Asia.

[MarcoP]

Thank you, Rene! This seems to me a very interesting herbal. The fact that it has both Latin names and German names (which have already been transcribed by the curators) makes it particularly appealing to me.

I think I have seen some herbal illustration with flowers similar to those of f90v1, but I don't remember where. If I find anything, I will post it here.

I attach images of Cynoglossum from the Alchemical Herbal BL Canon Misc 408 (Herba Ciloga) and from the copy of Cadamosto's herbal Harley ms 3736 (Cinoglossa, Lingua Canis).

[Helmut Winkler]

I think it was discussed on the Stephen Bax site. I think there are other similarities as well, cp. f. 1v with the striking brown and green leafs (upper and lower sides ?) with Eisenhut, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. He is one of my favourites as author.

[ReneZ]

Thanks Marco,

the first thing that is obvious is that the three illustrations in Hartlieb, the alchemical herbal and Cadamosto are completely different. For the alchemical herbal, no great similarity should be expected, and the one in Cadamosto looks closest to the real plant.

Comparisons with nature, even when this is being done by many (see  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ), have to be taken with the utmost care.
This will work for the later herbals, which were more tending to botany than to medicine.
For the Voynich MS we simply don't know.
Typically, the placement of the leaves cannot be relied upon, and this aspect is indeed different for all three illustrations of Hundszunge / Cynoglossa above.

The colour of the flower is another problem. Can we rely on this for the Voynich MS?
A very large number of plants in the Voynich MS have blue flowers. Now it could be, that the MS intentionally deals with blue flowers. It could also be that the colour is arbitrary. Finally, whoever painted the MS did not have purple available, so may have used blue also for purple flowers....

All in all, I don't see this as more than an attractive possibility, one to add to the list, and only when the list gets long enough, a pattern might emerge.

[Searcher]

I don't wan't to be too insistent, probably most of you saw this in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I'm very interested in an opinion about my comparison of the plants on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f90v1. 
Lunaria annua or Lunaria rediviva (2 stages: flowers, seedpods):

[Searcher]

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.