Description

There is a large plant drawing occupying most of Folio 16r, accompanied by three blocks of text (if you consider the hanging indent as part of the first “paragraph” and the text at the top right a continuation of lines 1 and 2). The plant has some very specific and fairly naturalistic characteristics.

The root is thick, appears to have short root hairs, and is painted brown. The stems grow out from a bole (a diagrammatic representation of a tough woody base), something you might find on a sturdy shrub or tree.

The star-like serrated leaves have from seven to nine leaflets and are somewhat widely spaced along the main stem. The leaves are attached by fairly long stems and are peltate (centered) or nearly so.

At the top of the plant are what appear to be fruiting bodies or very small florets, with leaflets poking out from between them that are rounder than the lower leaves, singular, and painted a slightly lighter shade of green.

Identification

I didn’t bother to seek out identifications of this plant by other Voynich researchers because it looks so much like Cannabis it’s hard to imagine it as anything else. Cannabis plants can grow quite large and treelike, sometimes over nine feet high. They have distinctive buds at the ends of the stems, with leaflets visible between the numerous florets. The leaflets aren’t quite as blunt as FM 16r, but the lower leaves do tend to be a bit darker. As the fruiting bodies mature, the area around them darkens to a reddish brown.

Small Cannabis plants have numerous fine roots and I wasn’t able to verify whether large plants develop the heavy roots illustrated in Plant 16r. If not, then either this is a different plant or the VM illustrator was guessing (or ascribing some unknown meaning to the shape of the roots).

Other Possibilities

No matter how much 16r looks like Cannabis, it’s important to consider alternatives.

Lupinus plants have star-like leaves, but the flower spikes differ markedly from Plant 16r. There are other plants with leaflets poking out from the florets, but their leaves differ significantly from Cannabis.

One could frame an argument that this is a chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus), another ancient medicinal herb, but  chaste-tree branches split and spread more broadly than plant 16r, and the more widely spaced florets have no significant leaflets poking out from the spikes. The leaves of V. agnus-castus are less serrated and have fewer leaflets than the lower leaves of Plant 16r. Vitex negundo has more distinct serrations than V. agnus-castus, but the leaflets are petioled and the stems are opposite.

Assuming for now that Plant 16r may be Cannabis, it’s difficult to say whether the drawing represents C. sativa or C. indica—both plants are similar in general morphology. Since Cannabis plants can be quite variable, depending on growing conditions and climate, the VM plant might even be somewhat generic, representing both.

We could hazard a guess that the wider spacing of the leaves and larger number of medium-narrow leaflets favors sativa, but that assumes the illustrator knew there were two species and was intending a naturalistic representation rather than a schematic one. Since there are stylistic choices in some of the other VM plants (roots with heads, roots as animal shapes), we can’t assume all the plant drawings are strictly literal. Nonetheless, if this is Cannabis, it’s a pretty good drawing, better than most botanical drawings of the time, and almost as recognizable as a real plant as the viola on Folio 9v.

J.K. Petersen

Description

Prior Identification

Edith Sherwood has identified Plant 15v as Paris quadrifolia. This seems unlikely, even if the plant has the same basic shape and number of leaves. In contrast to Paris, Plant 15v has long, gently curved stems with rows of berries or small rounded blossoms. Paris has a single flower or berry at the end of a much shorter stem. It is far more likely that this is Spigellia, which it matches well, than Paris.

Posted by J. Petersen

July 25, 2013

Postscript (Jan. 12, 2018): When I originally posted the above identification, in 2013, I didn’t have time to search for public domain images of Spigellia to show how well the VMS drawing matches. Now that more images are available, it’s much quicker and easier to find them and I am posting a small selection so you can see that the VMS drawing resembles Spigelia much more than Paris quadrifolia:

Spigelia anthelmia flower stalks are often longer and more wavy than these drawings. When they mature, small round berry-like fruits are formed. The root forms side-growing rhizomes which were used in traditional medicine.

As can be seen from these images, Spigellia anthelmia typically has double pairs of leaves (from a distance they look like four leaves because the pairs are next to each other at right angles) and sports distinctive long curving flower stalks that form berry-like knobs when the fruits are ripe. There may be one to four flower stalks per plant, but often they grow in pairs.

There’s a good photo of the living plant here.

Note how these dried specimens are more similar to the VMS plant—many of them have only a single set of leaves, especially when they are young. Note how the root-stalk has a small swollen knob. Specimens courtesy of the Linnaen Herbarium, Department of Phanerogamic Botany Swedish Museum of Natural History:

Description

Plant 13v covers most of the page from the upper text block to the bottom edge, but isn’t as wide as some of the other large plants.

There are two widely separated text blocks, and the bottom block breaks across the plant stalks in two places.

The drawing appears to represent two closely associated plants, the stems are arising from separate tubers, one behind the other. The tubers are rounded, somewhat onion-shaped, with fairly thick, short side roots. The stalk curves a little and has the occasional leaflet or bract.

The leaves are arranged in pairs and densely clustered. The attachment between the stem and leaves suggests this is a branching plant. Note that it branches five times. The leaves have been painted brown, light brown, green, and light green, probably to distinguish individual leaves in a thick cluster or otherwise in close association with each other, as has been done in some of the other drawings.

The plant on the right has a second stalk or runner leading to another dense clump of leaves, which makes it hard to tell, without further study, whether this is an upright plant or a trailing vine. The plant on the right has no flowers.

The plant on the left has, at its end, flower heads that extend from behind the three end leaf pairs. There there is a pair of leaflet-shapes or a claw shape at the base of the center flower head that has not been painted green (and may be something other than leaflets).

The flower heads on the sides don’t protrude as far as the one in the center, so it can’t be seen from this angle whether they too have petals/bracts/leaflets between the flower head and the end leaves but it’s probable that their shape mimics that of the central flowerhead.

Prior Identification

Edith Sherwood has identified Plant 13v as Lonicera periclymenum (Honeysuckle) even though few of the structural details are the same as 13v. Here are some of the ways in which L. periclymenum differs from the VM plant:

• L. periclymenum leaves have longer tips, are not rounded and don’t grow in dense clumps. They tend to be more evenly spaced along the vine.
• L. periclymenum doesn’t have a vase-like structure where the blossoms connect to the stem, as is seen in 13v.
• L. periclymenum has reddish and yellowish blossoms, but the VM illlustrator chose blue for the main part of the flower head, even though a reddish pigment (or at least a brown pigment) was available to the VM illustrator.
• L. periclymenum roots are more slender or stringy, rather than roughly onion-shaped.
• L. periclymenum does not specifically branch in five directions at the stem node as shown on both plants in 13v.

It’s true that L. periclymenum leaves sometimes have a “fused” appearance where the flowers come out of what appears as “Siamese leaves” (e.g., L. Sempervirens) but the similarities to 13v in other respects aren’t sufficient to make L. periclymenum a good candidate.

Other Possibilities

Some VM plants are more difficult to identify than others. The illustrator was somewhat scientific in approach, interested in portraying details, but was clearly not a professional artist and shows a certain “impatience” or haste in filling in the colors in the plants. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that Plant 13v may be a species of Euphorbia.

The most distinctive features of Plant 13v are 1) the rounded root, 2) the dense association of the leaf shapes, 3) the vase-shaped flower heads with protrusions reminiscent of a snake’s tongue, 4) a stem that branches in five directions, and 5) the fact that two plants, one with flowers, one without, have been drawn together. That the rightmost plant has a double stalk or perhaps a runner should also be considered.

These features are found to a greater or lesser extent in a number of Euphorbias.

Euphorbia is an extremely diverse species. Many closely related Euphorbias don’t resemble each other at all. They range from large multi-limbed cacti, to small star-leaved groundcovers.  Some even look like pineapples, with a round scaly clump that resembles a soccer ball waiting to be kicked. Even the tiny spotted spurge that creeps along driveways and lanes is a species of Euphorbia. Not all Euphorbias have rounded tubers. Many have medium- to fine-texture tap roots.

Thus, it’s important to focus on Euphorbias with characteristics similar to 13v, such as Euphorbia apios, a small Mediterranean plant with tubers that resemble lumpy turnips. Euphorbia helioscopia is a common variety with similarities to E. apios, but the root is rarely rounded—it is more of a tap root.

E. apios was historically called “wild radish” and may be the Apios ischas mentioned in Pliny’s The Natural History. E. apios throws out runners that creep along the ground. The outside of the tuber is dark, the inside lighter.

Details

Pinning down the species of Euphorbia is difficult but it might be possible to narrow them down based on some of the 13v details. For example, a number of Euphorbias specifically branch in five directions as is illustrated by the VM plant.

The curved ends of the 13v flowerhead resemble E. helioscopius or E. cyparissias more than E. apios—the snake-tongue protrusions are more distinct than those of E. apios, but E. apios has a tuber very much like 13v.

E. apios is not a perfect match either, despite the rounded tuber. The flowerhead is quite nobby, while the flowerhead on 13v is smooth.

Not all Euphorbias have rounded leaves. Some have points at the tips and many are elliptical or lanceolate, but 13v emphasizes the rounded shape typical of a number of Euphorbias.

Whether 13v is a lesser-known species, an extinct species, or whether the VM illustrator created a picture intended to demonstrate the more common characteristics of closely related species is not clear but it seems unlikely that this is Lonicera periclymenum and more likely that it’s Euphorbia.

 Posted by J.K. Petersen