The Voynich Botanical Plants

Folio 20v. Carduus thistle, (cirsium). There are a number of different species belonging to this genus, the milk or blessed thistle, the bull thistle, the Italian thistle and the artichoke thistle, all commonly called cardoon. This folio may represent the Italian thistle, a species native to the Mediterranean. Its stems, like the folio drawing, are winged with spines. Pliny and medieval writers thought that thistles could return hair to a bald head and until modern medicine it was used as a remedy for headaches, plague, cancer sores, vertigo and jaundice. (4) (B)