rotunda root is drawn like a sack of marbles, with an accompanying dragon, while the roots in the second chart farther below look like vague lumps or puzzle pieces and do not include the dragon (in other words, the dragon only occurs in drawings with a specific and distinctive style of root drawing).

In the following group of manuscripts, the A. There are also a few drawings that fall in between the vague root and the round one but, in general, most are obvious copies of their predecessors. In the following illustrations, note the arrangement of the leaves, the distinctively different ways of drawing the root, and the presence or absence of the dragon (in conjunction with the root style):

SmearwortĪristolochia rotunda was known as “smearwort” due to its perceived medicinal value, or “round-rooted birthwort” ( Aristolochia longa is a related plant known as birthwort). The dates in this example are approximate (I also have a version that more accurately shows date ranges and their level of confidence, but a ballpark is good enough for a blog post). Organizing the chart with thumbnails for each plant makes it easier to compare and contrast the drawings. I’ve simplified the layout for blog display by taking out the relationship arrows. There may still be small details to adjust but, for the most part, I believe the IDs to be good. All these flagposts were taken into consideration. I consulted textual herbals, as well (those without diagrams). The names of the plants and their spellings often help to confirm the pictorial features, together with the order in which the plants are represented (sometimes even the page numbers match). I had some background in plants before I learned about the VMS, and I should point out that visual similarity was not the only criterion for organizing these images. It may have been mistaken for another plant (it is labeled Aristocia longa but looks like a drawing of Cyclamen). Harley 4986 stands out from the more typical English manuscripts because Aristolochia longa was drawn with a round root. Aristolochia is not native to the United Kingdom, but it is interesting that it appeared in English manuscripts from about the 11th century onward, usually in a viny style with a round or spindly root. The chart below is a small corner of a very large diagram that compares more than 75 herbal manuscripts from the 6th century to the 16th century (there are also sources from the 17th century, but I have not included them in this VMS-related discussion).įor this example, the English manuscripts are not visible in the first excerpt (they are off to the right), as they form yet another distinctively recognizable group. I can choose any plant in any manuscript that is included in the files and, in a few seconds, display the relationships among them (this is the result of more than 11 years of comparison, classification, and identification of medieval plant drawings and is still ongoing). I organized the information so that each dot on the chart is replaced with an image of the plant. This kind of chart is helpful for an overview of illustrative descent, but it doesn’t help one to see or compare the drawings.

Medieval dragon manuscript