This is a plant ID I posted 4 1\/2 years ago. As some readers may have noticed, I uploaded many plant IDs in July 2013, but took down more than half of them about a week later because I was eager to solve the VMS and felt I might be giving too much away, but since the VMS has not yet been solved, as of Feb. 2018, I’ve had a change of heart and have decided to post them again as I have time. I haven’t changed the original text because I haven’t seen anything in the interim that alters my opinion about this plant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Plant 18v features a large drawing occupying most of the page. There is a ten-line block of text to the right at the top.<\/p>\n The stalk is quite upright and lightly painted. The leaves are a fairly solid green and fan-like, with about six rounded tips per leaf. The way they are attached to the stalk is variable\u2014sometimes alternate, sometimes opposite. Some plants are like this, but most tend to lean toward one or the other.<\/p>\n The root has two sections, more bulbous near the stalk, with a long rhizome at the base. It is selectively painted a light reddish-brown and includes a long “tail” that might be characteristic of the plant (some plants have extended rhizomes that are more slender) or which might be symbolically related to the identity of the plant. There are protrusions from the rhizome shaped a bit like a caterpillar.<\/p>\n I only have a few candidates for Plant 18v and I’m not satisfied that the first three are close enough, but I’ll mention them, for the record:<\/p>\n Some species of hibiscus have five distinctive rounded red enlargements at the end of the pistil. [Image detail courtesy of Jawahar Swaminathan<\/a>]<\/p><\/div>I can only think of one plant that specifically has finger-like leaves, a fairly thick root, and five branched reddish blobs at the end of the style, and one has to imagine that the petals have been stripped away, or that it’s late in the year when the petals retract so you can see the structures inside the blossom.<\/p>\n Different species of hibiscus have somewhat variable leaves, but quite a few of them have fan- or hand-shaped leaves.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Plant18v.jpg\")
Description<\/strong><\/p>\nPrior Identifications<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Sherwood18v.jpg\")
<\/a>Edith Sherwood<\/a> has identified this as columbine (Aquilegia alpina)<\/em>, perhaps because colombine leaves are somewhat fingerlike, but I don’t think it’s a very good fit. Colombine leaves do fan out, but they are also trifoliate, which the VMS leaves are not, and colombine does not have an elaborate, extended, branched style\/pistil. In fact, one of the distinctive characteristics of colombine is that the flowers nod and have spurs extending toward the sky, something that is not expressed in any way in the VMS drawing.<\/p>\nOther Possibilities<\/h4>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/HibiscusPistil.jpg\")
<\/a>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/18vPistil.jpg\")
<\/a>If you peel away the petals on Althea (Malva)<\/em>, the plants commonly called hibiscus and hollyhock, the pistils of some species might be drawn like Plant 18v, and the leaves are a pretty good match as well. On some species the red knobs are close together, as in the photograph above, and in some they are splayed apart, as in the VMS drawing.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voynichportal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/MalvaSinensis.jpg\")
<\/a>Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (left),<\/em> a hibiscus that grows in Malaysia, has a particularly distinctive protrusion, with five branching knobs and a bottlebrush spray. The ends are bright red, as in the VMS drawing, but H. rosa-sinensis<\/em> does not have fingerlike leaves, they are elliptical, so it’s not quite a match.<\/p>\n