I’m not sure there is direct influence from medieval herbals.

Perhaps it was someone who knew plants, who managed a garden, who then had a chance to glance through a regular herbal (oak and ivy) and perhaps one of the so-called “herbals of the alchemists” (with symbolic and mnemonic roots), someone who said, “That’s a cool idea,” and then went home to create the VMS based on his or her personal knowledge of plants (and medieval understanding of mnemonics)… without the opportunity to copy directly (books were precious commodities that most people couldn’t afford).

There is quite a bit of naturalistic detail in the VMS drawings, details one doesn’t usually find in plant drawings of the early 15th century, details that might be included if a harvested plant were next to the illustrator.

The leaves certainly appear to be symbolic or mnemonic, and yet even though the root has a humanoid form, it is more similar to a real mandrake root than it is to traditional drawings.

This is also true of the plant usually called the “water lily”. The rhizome is more similar to a real plant than to traditional drawings.