From: william edmondson <w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: VMs: Viola tricolor
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 11:07:52 +0100
Ignotum per ignotius
On 25 May 2004, at 10:39, Nick Pelling wrote:
Hi William,
At 21:37 24/05/2004 +0100, William Edmondson wrote:
Misidentification could lead to poisoning - badly drawn plants could lead
to misidentification - that was all I meant.
Again, this assumes that correct identification of naturally-occurring
plants is the sole purpose of the herbal pictures. Is it?
I still haven't seen a good argument/explanation as to why/how poor
representations of well-known herbs/medicinals could be useful.
They may simply be aide-memoires; or (collectively) a way of navigating a
large set of small documents; or simply decorative features; or the name
of each herb might constitute a key used to decipher (somehow) the text on
that page (the picture need then be only the minimally recognisable
depiction, not the maximally reliable depiction); or the important part of
the plant might be intact but the rest might be deliberately distorted
("visual steganography"); or there may be not just "plain" herbals but in
fact several different kinds of drawing at play (for example, the
cryptoheraldry we've discussed on-list). The worst thing is that this list
barely scratches the surface of the possible explanations that might
satisfy your criterion of "usefulness".
Basically, "oranges are not the only fruit". :-9
Further, they are not all "well-known herbs/medicinals": despite Dana's
sterling efforts, only a few have been identified with a high degree of
certainty (f2v's nanufar / Nymphaea alba / water lily, for example), and
so the mystery remains.
Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
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Dr William Edmondson
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston B15 2TT
UK
Voice: +44-121-414-4763
email: w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxx
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