Commiphora abyssinica<\/em>, the tree that produces sap from which we get myrrh, a resin that has been highly esteemed for thousands of years for its preservative, medicinal, and fragrant qualities.<\/p>\nIf the VMS drawing represents balsam, or some kind of sap that is harvested like balsam, then it follows tradition in a number of important ways: it’s somewhat fern-like, includes a reference to collecting-vases, and includes droplets with their tails pointing down, all characteristics found in manuscripts of the early\/mid-15th century. But it is also different in some significant ways. It is greatly simplified, includes no gates or castles, and yet has something lacking from the other medieval drawings… the unusual little flower “vases” characteristic of balsam trees, a detail that only someone interested in plants would notice because these buds quickly turn into little knobs. I’ve said many times that I think whoever drew the VMS plants wasn’t just a copyist, that it was someone who knew a few things about plants, and the addition of these buds seems to point in that direction.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
J.K. Petersen<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a9 Copyright July 2013 and 3 May 2018 J.K. Petersen, All Rights Reserved<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2013, I posted some initial impressions of Plant 38r, stating that the “apostrophes” probably represented droplets (sap), but I couldn’t find enough public-domain images to fully explain what I feel it represents (posting an idea is one thing, convincing people that it’s a valid idea is entirely another) and opted to redact it rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[269,268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6107,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/6107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}