Category Archives: Medieval Iconography

The Lion and the Phoenix

In a previous blog, I illustrated some of the Asian stylistic conventions that influenced Persian art in the middle ages, with dragon and phoenix imagery as examples. A while later, it occurred to me that someone reading the blog might get the misimpression that the phoenix itself had been inherited from east Asian art, but that is not that case. Persian culture was already rich with “phoenix/firebird” legends prior to the infusion of Asian illustrative traditions.

The Simurgh is a mythical bird that greatly resembles the east Asian phoenix except that it was originally drawn with a lion’s face and forepaws. In most respects, however, it would be mistaken for a phoenix by anyone not familiar with Arabic script or ancient Persian culture and, indeed, the two became almost indistinguishable after Asian drawing styles and myths were absorbed into Persian art, as is illustrated by this 17th century example:

In Isfandiyâr’s fifth trial in the Book of Kings (1616), he battles the simurgh with a well-aimed swipe to the neck. In the same manuscript, the simurgh is present at the birth of Rustam,legendary hero-to-be, who teams up with the simurgh to defeat Isfandiyâr. [Image courtesy of NYPL Spencer Coll. Pers. MS 3.]

We can trace the evolutionary development of the Persian simurgh in reverse. In this 1330 manuscript from Shiraz, we see the simurgh with phoenix body and a shorter raptor neck and head, engaged in a fierce battle with Isfandiyâr. It is similar in form to an illustrated version of The Wonders of Creation that was written in the 13th century.

This Sassanid silver plate has a bird-like version of the symurgh motif that was popular from around the 7th to 10th centuries:

This birdlike simurgh retains very little of the lion shape other than the forepaws, and includes a more extravagant tail similar to later expressions of phoenix imagery. [Photo credit: Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran.]

In even earlier depictions, the lion head and paws of the Simurgh are more evident, as in this silk fabric based on a griffon-style simurgh, a motif that was popular from the 6th to 9th centuries and possibly earlier. The only really bird-like aspect is the wings, although sometimes a mammalian face would include a beak:

Silk fabric featuring two simurghs facing one another with a tree (possibly the tree of life) between them. [Image credit:Tehran National Museum photo by Fabien Dany – www.fabiendany.com]

Sometimes a dog was substituted for the lion, but either way, the simurgh of this time period was rather gryphon-like.

This 13th-century image from the Aberdeen Bestiary, resembles the earlier raptor-like versions of the simurgh more than the eastern phoenix or later Persian simurghs:

In the Aberdeen Bestiary, from about 1200, a raptor-like phoenix sits in a container that it has created with aromatic substances such as frankincense and myrrh. It looks toward the sun and fans the flames that will soon consume it. This hawk or eagle form of phoenix is more similar to the earlier Persian simurghs than later ones that show far-Asian influence. [Image credit: Aberdeen Univ Lib. MS 24.]

In ancient depictions, from several centuries BCE until the Roman period, in both text and image, the Simurgh, or Senmurw, is a raptor associated with health and prosperity and has linguistic associations with a bird that collected and dispersed seeds far and wide to facilitate a good harvest. The imagery was merged with a lion or dog and then gradually morphed into an eastern-style phoenix. This detail of ancient harvest myths may be of interest to Voynich researchers.

It’s difficult to know how long the tree-of-life and harvest associations with the simurgh were retained, as the simurgh was constantly evolving, but there is a perplexing image in the Voynich Manuscript in which a creature that looks like a bird sits in a nest (or some kind of container) on a precipitous tor. Next to the bird is a tree-like structure that might be a tree, bush, or perhaps stalks of grain. It’s difficult to tell because many medieval drawings of trees are rather twig or grain-like.

Assuming this is a bird in a nest, it’s almost impossible to guess what kind of bird it is—it’s not very clearly drawn and many birds nest on the ground or in high places. There is another bird, or possibly another rendition of the same bird, in the upper right corner, which may or may not relate directly to the one below.

Summary

I’m sure there are already many explanations for the identity and meaning of the VMS bird—there are thousands of bird stories, many of them featuring raptors that nest in high places—but I wonder if anyone has suggested that this might be the ancient phoenix, in the style of some of the more ancient Persian harvest birds, or the firebird in the Aberdeen Bestiary presiding in its aromatic container. Could the grain-like “tree” that hovers over the VMS bird represent both crop fertility and the tree of life? These days, we’re accustomed to very extravagant drawings of phoenixes, but the earliest depictions of the symurgh and its medieval European variations were much simpler than they are now.

A phoenix drawn with Asian influence snatches baby Zal, the legendary warrior king and father of Rostam, in a detail from a c. 1370 manuscript from the Topkapi Palace Museum.

It was not uncommon for the simurgh to be drawn next to steep hills. The example on the right shows the phoenix rescuing baby Zal by a tall tree-flecked tor. The “Conference/Councourse of Birds” (a legend about birds seeking the phoenix to be their king) also frequently shows the birds against the backdrop of a steep mountain.

I’m not inclined to identify the VMS bird as a phoenix—the surrounding images don’t seem to confirm that idea. The bird in the top-right corner looks like it’s flying past a cloud deluge rather than into the sun to be consumed by flames, and phoenix myths don’t shed any light on the mysterious half-hidden figures on the left. But I wanted to mention the possibility in case there might be other myths or associations with the phoenix that could explain aspects of this folio. Three of the corners look like there is something flowing out of them, so the bottom-right is unique in having a plant-like structure rather than streams of mist or water (or spiritual energy). I’ve been assuming each corner is somehow associated with the others, but how direct that association might be is hard to say.

So, it’s just a thought (out of many), something to mull over until more is known about the bird.

The Gumshoe Herb Hunter

1 Reply

It’s a delight to look through old herbal manuscripts, especially those with text that describes the plants and their uses. Even if the language and style of script are unfamiliar (and heavily abbreviated), that’s part of the fun—you get to be a detective.

Trinity College MS O.2.48, for example, is full of intriguing details. Created a century or so before the Voynich manuscript, it includes more than 300 herbal images. Some plants are recognizable and others take effort to decipher, even when names are provided in several languages. Fortunately, the Web is full of resources to help us unravel the identifications.

MS O.2.48 parallels Plut.73.Cod.16 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) in many ways, which means the two can be enjoyed side-by-side while sorting out some of the more puzzling imagery.

They are not exact copies, the two manuscripts differ in drawing style and page layout—Plut.73 is more heavily and evenly painted, and the plants are more stylized and symmetric, as can be seen in these examples:

The Plutei and Trinity College manuscripts differ in drawing style, layout and content, but include many parallels that can help sort some of the less obvious plant IDs.

Highlights

MS O.2.48 was created sometime in the 1300s at an uncertain location. In addition to images of herbs, there are scenes about how herbs were used. For example, on folios 54v and 55r, herbe salomonis is held aloft by an important figure to help him exorcise the demons to the right:

At the top of the scene is something of particular interest to Voynich researchers, V-shaped crenellations called swallowtail merlons, similar to those on the rosettes foldout in Beinecke 408. This architectural style was associated, in earlier centuries, with the Ghibellines, supporters of the Holy Roman Empire, who were at political odds with those who supported the pope in Rome. Swallowtail merlons have become decorative elements since that time, but in the 14th and 15th centuries, they were still emblems of a long-standing power feud between the loyalists and the papists.

So what exactly do those merlons signify in a section devoted to herbs? Do they reveal the political leanings of those who created the manuscript? Or were the creators contemptuous of attempts to establish power centers outside of Rome? Or are they saying that supporters of the emperor are heretics in need of herbal “therapy”?

The text to the left of the plant gives us a clue. It identifies the man holding the plant as “beat[us] augustin[us] and describes a brief legend of the saint and the martagon plant (also labeled salominis, ventriosa/ventuosa, and vermatore). Thus, St. Augustine, who was born in Algeria and served as bishop of the region before traveling to northern Italy, was chosen to administer the rights. St. Augustine is an important symbol of the Catholic church and thus would be considered by papists as an appropriate emissary for wielding herbal power.

The provenance of MS O.2.48 is uncertain, but it’s thought it may have been created in Germany. The Ghibelline merlons suggest that if it is Germany, it’s probably southern Germany or Lombardy (which is now part of northern Italy). Lombardy was much larger in the middle ages, with an interesting blend of cultures (Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Bohemian) and was known to have a number of illumination studios. Sloane 4016 (mid-15th century) is one of the best-known herbal manuscripts created in this region.

On the Trail of the Martagon

Thus, the drawing reveals something about those who created the manuscript, but the label next to the plant is hard to reconcile with the plant itself. Most of the Trinity MS plant illustrations are reasonably naturalistic, but this plant doesn’t resemble the martagon lily (aka Turk’s cap lily) in any way—the roots, leaves, and flowers are all wrong.

A closer look at the flowers shows red droplets. Is this a reference to sap or perhaps to blood? There are a number of plants with red sap, but most of them don’t look like this. The alternate names aren’t helpful either. ventuosa/ventriosa, and vermatore/virmatore aren’t easy to reconcile, many old plant names have been lost, but Salonis/Salomonis might be helpful. There are a number of plants that go by this name, which is an ancient reference to King Solomon.

The most well-known plant associated with the name is Sigillum salomonis, or Solomon’s seal, due to the round seal-like scars on the plant’s knobby roots. Unfortunately, its distinctive bell-like white flowers dangling from one side of the stem don’t look like the plant in Trinity O.2.48.

Verbena was once called “tears of Isis” and was later adapted into the Christian religion as the herb that was placed on Christ’s wounds. This might explain the red droplets, but Verbena is already represented in the Trinity MS by a drawing that more closely resembles the actual plant. The herbs in the Nine Herbs Charm didn’t provide any close matches either. Mugwort fits the context, but the flowers are spikes and the leaves are deeply serrated.

Bishop’s wort (Stachys officinalis) is an ingredient in remedies to exorcise demons. It has elliptical leaves but doesn’t closely match the flowers, and doesn’t explain the red droplets, but it’s closer to the drawing than plants called “martagon” or “Salomonis”, and fits the context.

Summary

I considered that the plant might be St. John’s wort (Hypericum), which has elliptical leaves, red sap that appears when the leaves are pounded, and fuzzy yellow flowers that change to a berry-like fruit. It is said to provide protection against demons, but it doesn’t appear to have a strong connection to exorcisms, and the plant in Trinity O.2.48 is quite large, larger than one might expect Hypericum to be drawn.

Laurus nobilis courtesy of Wikipedia.

The best candidate I’ve found so far, and I’m not certain it’s the right one, is Laurus nobilis, known as sweet bay. Laurel is a large shrubby plant with elliptical leaves and clusters of yellow flowers that point in various directions and change to small black fruits. It was a healing herb with the power to exorcise demons. In the 19th century, Parkinson writes: “It serveth to adorne the house of God, as well as of man; to procure warmth, comfort, and strength…” Northcote notes in 1903 that the Romans called it “the Plant of the Good Angell” and that it was used, in Rome, to “trim up their Churches and Monasteries on Solemn Festivals…” So Laurus nobilis has a strong connection to the Christian church consistent with the legend of St. Augustine.

So perhaps sweet bay is the puzzling plant and perhaps not. As far as Voynich research goes, a number of detractors have used the difficulty of identifying the VMS plants as a rationale for calling the VMS a hoax, but Trinity O.2.48 demonstrates that a plant can be clearly drawn and labeled, and even include allegorical imagery to explain it further, and still be a challenge to unravel.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript: After I wrote this blog, I became aware of M. Ponzi’s translation of the story of St. Augustine in the Trinity MS text. You might enjoy reading the story so I have added a link here.

Cultural Pollination

From Watering Holes to Warfare

The Mongols have long been known for their great equestrian skills, and for their ability to travel long distances through harsh climates. In the 13th century they were ambitious invaders, making repeated efforts to conquer China, parts of Russia, and even eastern Europe—their campaigns ranged over thousands of miles. In so doing, they came in contact with diverse cultures, sometimes absorbing their ideas, other times influencing or extinguishing them.

Some theorists say the Asian style of dragon that is especially prevalent in China, and to a lesser extent in Persia, was influenced by Mongolian art. I don’t have time to research this, it seems to me that 13th-century Mongolian art has a different look and different themes, and that a phoenix with flowing lines existed in early Japanese art and is found in Uzbekistan mosaic art, so perhaps it was indirect rather than direct influence that brought the extravagant flames and curlicue clouds to Persia in the middle ages. There were surely multiple lines of transmission, Mongol caravans with foreign goods, and new trade routes opened by Mongol incursions, but land-roving nomads were not the only visitors—seafaring traders were constantly moving goods between east and west and ship technology was constantly improving. Whatever the source, the ties with Asia are readily apparent in 13th-century Persian art.

Click to see a larger version.

This fabulous textile art, created around the 11th or 12th century in east-central Asia, is thought to have been crafted by the Turkic Uyghur people, and might represent another route of transmission for east-to-west dragon imagery:

Note: Uyghur dragon textile was added a few hours after the blog was published. Note the tail snaking through the legs, a motif often seen in Mediterranean and western European drawings of lions. [Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

With reference to the Persian Ilkhanid Period (1256–1353):

“In [book] illustration, new ideas and motifs were introduced into the repertoire of the Muslim artist, including an altered and more Chinese depiction of pictorial space, as well as motifs such as lotuses and peonies, cloud bands, and dragons and phoenixes.” –Suzan Yalman, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[Cockerel images added April 8, 2017] These examples from a group of Arabic manuscripts that were inspired by Al-Qazwini’s 13th-century bestiary, illustrate interesting differences in style:

Al-Qazwini’s bestiary, created around the mid-13th century, was reproduced in different versions. The top example of a cock from Walters MS 659 (1500s) is a traditional depiction, with no exaggeration in the landscape or details, the bottom one, from Bibliotèque Bordeau MS 1130, clearly shows eastern influence in the curlicue clouds, undulating landscape, and extravagant flame-like tail-feathers. The cock has almost been transformed into a phoenix.

Within the next few centuries, the eastern influence becomes even more apparent…

The British Library holds an illustrated Arabic romance of the adventures of the Persian King Darab, originally composed in the 12th century by Muhammad ibn Hasan Abu Tahir Tarsusi. The library’s copy dates to between c. 1580 to c. 1585, so it’s not as old as the phoenix tiles, but it shows a similar adaptation of eastern style in dragon art.

In this dramatic scene, Bahman and his horse are swallowed whole:

The nose looks like a camel, and it’s clearly a malevolent beast, but the tendrils on the lower jaw, the whiskers, eye-stripe, and mane are in the flamelike undulating style that is common to Chinese dragons.

[I had an example of an Asian-style dragon from western Europe that I found about three months ago but, unfortunately, despite a concerted hunt through my files, I can’t find it. If I do, I will upload it here.]

Summary

This is, in a sense, a follow-up to the post on the jongleurs, where the French illustrator used a different style to express itinerant performers (who may have been of eastern origin), but I also have a personal interest in Asian art and looked up some more specific examples that relate to cultural transmission to see when these particular styles were introduced to the Arabic world. Persia has had political ties with China at least since the 6th century (royalty intermarried), so there may be other examples, but unfortunately I can’t pursue all of them.

The images are interesting in their own right, so I decided to post them for Voynich researchers who may be curious about cultural influences between east and west.

J.K. Petersen

Things that Make Your Head Spin

3 Replies

Do These Heads Tell Tales?

Some of the Voynich plants have a more naturalistic feel to them, including “viola” and the “water lily”, and some have stylistic differences and less obvious botanical structures that may be mnemonic, or representative of something more than (or something different from) a botanical illustration.

Plant 51v strikes me as more stylized than many of the other plants. The leaves look like beetles, the flowers have alternating colors that remind me of pinwheels (I call them spinnerheads), the roots look like a pair of medieval hose with legs crossed, including the long pointed toes that were all the rage.

Taken as a whole, the composition has a lively dancing feel to it, but I held off writing about it because I didn’t know how to convey this impression in words.

And then I stumbled upon an 11th-century image that conveys the same feeling I get from looking at the VMS plant drawing and it has the added bonus of… alternating flower-like “petals” in the same basic colors as the VMS.

Troubadours and Jongleurs

Medieval peasants and gentry loved entertainment and many of the nobility had live-in musicians, magicians, jugglers, and poets. There were also itinerant storytellers and colorful entertainers who traveled the country in wagons, a tradition that continues today in the modern circus.

This fabulous image is startling in its tropical brightness at a time when natural earth pigments could be quite pale and subdued. The colors fit well with the theme, commemorating those who brighten our day with music and sport. Other folios with musical notation are created in a similar style.

On the left, the musician wears a jaunty two-toned shirt with red collar and cuffs, and plays a double-reed flute (a forerunner to our oboe). Each cheek sports a clown-like spot of red. His fingers are unusually long and gracefully curved, reminiscent of Balinese dancers and elegantly long Buddha fingers. In fact, there’s a gourd named “Buddha’s hand” that looks just like this. The eyes resemble those in Persian paintings that feature almond shapes and long curving eyebrows.To his right is a person of small stature. Dwarves and midgets had limited opportunities for employment in the middle ages, so those with special talents often ended up as entertainers in royal courts. It is said that a gifted poet whose name may be featured on the Bayeau tapestry may have been a dwarf. Like the musician, the juggler has stage-makeup cheeks, very long, eastern-style fingers, and two objects that may be balls or some kind of round object that he is deftly spinning on his fingertips. There is a second folio that repeats this theme and shows the balls high in the air.

Musician and juggle in the Tropaire-Prosaire à l’usage d’Auch, c. 990 to c. 1010, Abbey Saint-Martial de Limoges

It’s tempting to think the manuscript was created by someone from the southern or eastern Mediterranean (or someone influenced by eastern art), but it’s illustrated by the painter of the lectionary of the library of the Abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges, France, and much of the painter’s work shows Roman influence rather than eastern. The same painter is said to have worked on a large number of manuscripts.

Even the images with Roman themes have very long pointed fingers, mixed with fingers of normal proportions with rounded ends. The large portions of blue pigment in the jongleur images are absent in many of the other drawings, giving these pages a special look and feel.

Summary

I don’t have time to look into the Tropaire-Prosaire à l’usage d’Auch in more depth, but I thought Voynich researchers might enjoy the unique style of the image, and the juggling balls that resemble the VMS flowers. I don’t know if the pattern on the balls is meant to be decorative or to simulate the motion of spinning balls, but it’s one of the few examples of alternating orange and light “petals” that I’ve seen so far.

Getting back to the VMS plant, the shape of the plant very much reminds me of a dancer. Whether this is accidental or intentional, I can’t be sure, but if it is intended to be botanical, perhaps the unusual pose has some stylistic or mnemonic significance to the plant.

J.K. Petersen

Voynich Large Plants – Folio 50v

Other IDs

In 2008, Edith Sherwood identified this plant as Gentiana frigida, a small Carpathian plant that grows close to the ground. Gentian has delicate bell-like flower petals and thin hair-like roots. The leaves are narrow and upright, like snowdrop leaves. I don’t think Gentian frigida‘s root, leaves, or flower are a good match for the VMS.

Detail from a herbarium specimen of Arctium, courtesy of the New Zealand government.

My best candidate for this plant drawing is Arctium (burdock) because it has seedheads with very distinctive hooks. The roots are fairly beefy and the leaves somewhat variable. The only part that doesn’t seem to fit is the bumps on the root. Arctium minus leaves are sometimes rounder and less ruffled than Arctium lappa but leaf shape can be quite variable. The leaves tend to be more rounded when the plant is young. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s much closer to the VMS drawing than Gentiana frigida.

Arctium minus is native to Eurasia but has naturalized in North America. The stalks are sometimes green, sometimes reddish. The shoots and roots are eaten.

Arctium Seedheads

I think the VMS “flower” is probably a seedhead, with hooks at the tips.

Before Arctium seeds are fully ripe, there is a rounded yellowish center nested within a ring of projecting hooks, a characteristic that is well represented in the VMS drawing. The hooks are quite substantial. They will stick to your fingers or clothing, a dispersion strategy used by the plant to spread its seeds when wildlife wanders by. You can think of it as the Velcro® plant. Alex Hyde has captured an excellent macro-lens photo of the hooks here.

Sometimes several seedheads are at the end of a single stalk. They don’t grow together as in the VMS drawing, but perhaps this is a stylized diagram that says, “There may be several seedheads but they all look like this at the top”.

There are other plants with burred seedheads but they don’t match the VMS drawing as well.

Agrimony has seedheads with little hooks, but the rest of the plant does not resemble Plant 50v.
Krameria has burrs, but the leaves are small and grow in profusion along the stock, like broom.
Xanthium (cocklebur) is similar to Arctium, but the seedheads are oblong and grow off the main stem rather than clustering on long stalks.
Burr grass looks like a stalk of wheat except that the seeds are little star-like burs rather than oval pellets of grain so, overall, it does not match well

Except for the bumps on the roots, Arctium seems to be the best choice. It is reasonably consistent with the VMS drawing and one of the best matches for the hooks.

J.K. Petersen

Voynich Large Plants – Folio 33r

VMS Plant 33r

Plant 33r inhabits most of the space on the folio except for seven lines of text.

Seed Heads

The plant is topped with slightly rotating rosettes on swollen seed capsules (I might be wrong, but I don’t think they are flowers). There are slight vertical striations in the capsules and dots that might be an indication of texture or shadow. One of the capsules is sightly obscured behind another.

The top of the capsules have been painted in alternating green against the color of the vellum, and the lower portion is lightly washed with a bluish-gray, a color not often seen in the VMS (might it mean that these are dried before use?).

Leaves

The hastate leaves are close to the base and spread around the stem somewhat. They have smooth margins and are painted a fairly solid medium-dark green. Hastate leaves are similar to arrowheads. If the points are exaggerated, then it’s also possible the leaves are sagittate, so I tried to keep both of these shapes in mind when thinking about IDs.

Stems

The stems are moderately sturdy, painted with a very pale wash. They get thinner and branch toward the leaves. A couple of the bottom ones are slightly arched downwards. I wonder if this is an attempt to suggest a rosette of leaves around the stem.

Roots

The roots have a thickened portion in the middle, medium-thick tendrils reaching down and out, and two even-thicker tendrils or rhizomes spreading to the sides and terminating in two heads that look to me like tonsured monks. Hair styles were long in the Middle Ages, so it’s hard to imagine these heads as anything other than monks unless, of course they represent something non-human, like personified moons. If they are moons, they might stand for the name of the plant or the best time to harvest it (during the full moon?). Or maybe the moon is the governing celestial body for the plant. The tendrils are roughly painted a medium brown (not nearly as carefully as the leaves).

Prior IDs

I didn’t look up Prior IDs for this plant because I can only think of two reasonable possibilities and even the second one seems to be a bit of a stretch. Plus, I tend to disagree with existing IDs, so sometimes I’m not motivated to look them up.

Identifying 33r

When I first saw 33r, back in 2007, I noticed the exaggerated seed capsules and immediately thought of poppy. But then I looked at the leaves and roots and changed my mind.

Poppies have very jaggy leaves, and they are not hastate or sagittate. Even the Himalayan poppies don’t have leaves like plant 33r.

If the roots are rhizomes, that doesn’t match poppy either.

On closer inspection, I had doubts about the seed capsules as well.

These weren’t poppy capsules, they were water lily capsules. Probably not Nelumbo species, which have very broad capsules with large seeds that protrude, and very round leaves, but the other species of water lilies, like Nuphar and Nymphea.

Nuphar has distinctly vase-shaped capsules with striations, depressions in the middle of the upper rosette, and leaves that are heart-shaped or sagittate, sometimes like long-arrowheads.

Nuphar grows worldwide, with one of the more common species (Nuphar lutea) having a broad distribution around the Mediterranean and Eurasia. Nuphar has rhizomes (side-growing roots) that stretch to several meters, and the leaves fan out at intervals along the rhizome. I don’t know if Nuphar can have multiple flowers on one stalk, I don’t think I’ve seen that, but the other characteristics of the plant match quite well.

The Problems with Papaver

In contrast to Nuphar and the VMS, poppy plants have a very jagged leaf margin (sometimes clasping), and most of them are frondy, like ferns, not at all like the VMS drawing. The roots are finer, lighter, and usually more vertical than the VMS drawing.

Papaver seedheads are mostly shaped like covered urns, rather than vases, and the number of striations on top is usually less than the VMS, sometimes as few as five. They do not have the depression in the center characteristic of Nuphar and Nymphaea. Many poppy plants have a knob under the capsule, and sometimes a row of holes under the rosette to disperse the seeds when the wind blows. The VMS does not include these details.

Nuphar capsules sometimes have a very slight hint of a spiral overlap in the upper rosette (it’s subtle and it’s not present in all of them). I’ve never seen this in a poppy capsule although they do sometimes have a scalloped edge.

Poppy plants have tap roots, sometimes very thin tap roots, and they are often very light in color. A few species have tendrils, like buttercup roots, but they’re not usually thick as thick as the VMS roots.

What about the Bumps on Top?

One detail that had me wondering was the little bumps on the seed capsule. They’re completely unlike Papaver, but they’re not entirely like Nuphar or Nymphaea, which have a depression in the center. Then I remembered another VMS plant in which the seeds inside a pod had been exaggerated, so I wondered if this was the same idea.

Nuphar and Nymphaea have very different internal structures to the seed capsules than poppies.

Poppy is a land plant. The seeds roll around freely inside the capsule chambers and are dispersed by wind when the capsule dries, or they drop off and get stepped on or fall out through the holes near the top, under the edge of the rosette.
Nuphar and Nymphaea are aquatic plants and the seeds are imbedded in a spongy matrix, rather than rolling around freely. This means if you cut across the top, you will see regular rows of seeds within a lighter medium. As the capsule ripens, it is exposed to water, which erodes it, gradually releasing the seeds (some of them ripen under water). Water lilies aren’t as wind-dependent as the Papavers.

I don’t know if this explains the bumps on the top, I’ll continue to think about it, but it’s one possibility.

And now to the most interesting part…

The Root Heads

I have difficulty explaining the heads if this is Papaver. Why two of them? Most poppies have tap roots, so why wasn’t it drawn with one head and a long narrow root? Why do the thickest roots stretch to the sides? Are they meant to suggest rhizomes that propagate like long snakes under ground or water? If so, they are more similar to water lilies.

Are these monks, as per my original impulse. Or are they moons? What are the pointy parts—are they water droplets with faces? Could this indicate an aquatic plant?

Depending on which source you consult, the moon is said to be the ruling body for both poppies and water lilies. A water lily picked on the full moon was used in spells to attract a lover, but this is in recent writings, and I haven’t been able to confirm if this accurately reflects a medieval spell.

Maybe the roots have some other meaning. Various parts of water lilies are eaten, and some have sedative or narcotic effects. Monks and nuns used them to suppress their sexual desires. When prepared as an alcohol tincture, they were an-aphrodisiacs. Could this account for the heads with shorn tresses? Are they tonsured monks?

Summary

Plant 33r is not a perfect match for water lilies. It’s close, much closer than Papaver, but why would the points on the leaves be exaggerated, and why are there bumps in the tops? Is it a really bad drawing of poppy?

Are there other explanations for the heads besides monks or moons or water droplets? I’m still mulling this over, but for now, the best ID I have is one of the Nuphars or Nymphaeas, both of which are widespread and well-known in the Middle Ages.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript 12 May 2019:

To make the similarities and differences between these plants more clear, I created a chart with a few samples (click to see it full-sized):

Voynich Portal

Ruminations about the mysterious 15th century "cipher manuscript"

Category Archives: Medieval Iconography

The Lion and the Phoenix

Summary

The Gumshoe Herb Hunter

Highlights

On the Trail of the Martagon

Summary

Cultural Pollination

From Watering Holes to Warfare

Summary

Things that Make Your Head Spin

Do These Heads Tell Tales?

Troubadours and Jongleurs

Summary

Voynich Large Plants – Folio 50v

Other IDs

Arctium Seedheads

Voynich Large Plants – Folio 33r

VMS Plant 33r

Leaves

Stems

Roots

Prior IDs

Identifying 33r

The Problems with Papaver

What about the Bumps on Top?

The Root Heads

Summary