D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “Perhaps you won’t want to publish this comment, but as a professional in my field I feel offended to have a formal evaluation treated as if it were a bit of guess-work. Informed debate yes, but that’s not what you’ve put up here.”

This blog has nothing to do with you, Diane, or anything you have written about banana plants. It doesn’t even mention the Voynich Manuscript.

I have been interested in plants all my life and I spend hours studying medieval herbals (both drawings and text) and I have been wanting to locate the source of the plant “musse/muse” since 2009, long before I made your acquaintance. I have found quite a bit of evidence that the plant called “musse/muse” in the early botanical manuscripts is not a banana/plantain plant, nor one of the “mouse-ear” plants.

In fact, I found more information today that adds to the evidence that “musse/muse” in the early herbals is not Musa (plantain/banana).

There is a 12th century medicinal manuscript that lists the plant “muse” in the section of plants that are used for their seeds and their leaves. In contrast, banana seeds and leaves were not harvested for medicinal use in the west in the Middle Ages. In fact, banana seeds are usually eaten along with the fruit, not separated out. Meleguete and various Amomum plants are specifically used for their seeds and sometimes for their leaves as well. In addition to the fact that the natives called these plants “massa”, and that Egerton 747 includes meleguete in almost the same position as “musse” in the Manfredus herbal, the evidence is accumulating that the early drawings labeled “musse/muse” represent one of the plants of the Zingiberaceae family.

If the aim of studying this manuscript is to understand the manuscript, then of course no-one wants to get this, or any other item, wrong. But one needs evidence of just which parts of the detailed commentary are wrong in your opinion, not just the urging of some ‘alternative’.

If, on the other hand your aim is to get rid of an item which opposes your preferred hypothesis for the manuscript, then of course you might want to substitute for an existing piece of evidence, some other idea more consonant with your desired outcome.

I understand how frustrating the manuscript can be – and how tempting to ignore or dismiss or replace bits that won’t fit. But doing so doesn’t serve the manuscript’s study in my opinion, so I myself decided not to form ‘theories’ at all; just to do my job and evaluate the imagery, leaving conclusions to Waaaay last.

When I consider what you have adduced by way of evidence, I cannot see any similarity to the primary document in the pictures you present. Not in terms of stylistics, nor proportions, nor details nor anything else.

Now, it is true that many of the botanical images make use of visual ‘shorthand’. I’m not speaking of the root-mnemonics but of representation of parts (often the flowers) by employing a conventional form which was well known and bore cultural significance for the people among whom the picture was first enunciated. Since those conventions – which I identified and illustrated, explaining the reason and widespread use for these forms – are not native to the Mediterranean, much less Latin Europe I could understand if the banana-group picture had been one of those sort. It is, however, one of the most nearly literal images in the entire manuscript, including perfect representation of the root – never seen in wholly western imagery for more than a century later.
In short, I stand by my evaluation of that image, and its proofs. The implication for one or another theoretical history for the manuscript is not really my problem. It just means the work isn’t a Latin herbal or anything like it.

Perhaps you won’t want to publish this comment, but as a professional in my field I feel offended to have a formal evaluation treated as if it were a bit of guess-work. Informed debate yes, but that’s not what you’ve put up here.