Instead of looking at real life examples you should troll the web and
look at herbals from the timeframe. They rarely look much like the
plants being depicted.
As for changes over 500 years, in many cases you are correct, but
there are certainly a lot of examples of species of plants being
changed/overrun over that timeframe. Heck, the grape plants in France
are all less than 100 years old - and all come from California and
other countries after the entire group of French vines was wiped out.
Larry Roux
Syracuse University
lroux@xxxxxxx
w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 06/09/04 09:45AM >>>
Hi
That is fine - but can these experts also offer us some descriptions of
how the illustrations differ from the plants 'depicted'? If we had
that then we'd know more about what allowances to make wrt the VMS
illustrations.
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm simply concerned to clarify the
basis on which people can say of any VMS illustration that it 'is of
plant xxxxx'. Currently I'm underwhelmed by any of the suggestions
offered, and really bothered that I can stroll into my garden to check
(and look in piles of books I have to support the gardening) and find
many many important taxonomical differences. If folk can genuinely
explain away those differences then let's hear about it.
On the face of it the possibility that plants evolved a lot over 500
years seems implausible. That drawings might be
systematically/stylistically 'erroneous' is interesting but I need the
evidence.
That's all.
William
On 9 Jun 2004, at 12:37, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
--- William Edmondson <w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi
The point I am trying to make (non-tetchily) is
simply that 'looks-like'
is very subjective. The drawing in question doesn't
look like a
strawberry plant - any strawberry plant - for a
number of reasons I listed.
It being subjective is true, but the real problem
is even worse. It was never really the purpose
of ME MS herbals to create lookalikes of the
plants, so the same objection could be applied
to a great many ME herbal drawings which are
known to represent a particular plant (the text
being readable).
I'm not a medieval herbal expert, but the above
statement comes not from me, but from people who
are (were).
Cheers, Rene
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Dr William Edmondson
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston B15 2TT
UK
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email: w.h.edmondson@xxxxxxxxxx
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