The Voynich Botanical Plants
Folio 10r. Chicory /Endive (Cichorium pumilum). The Romans used chicory in their recipes and Horace stated: “As for me, olives, endives, and mallows provide sustenance.” Today the leaves are used in salads and the parsnip-like roots are cooked for a vegetable or dried and used as a coffee substitute. The chicory root contains an oil effective in eliminating intestinal worms. (1) (B)
Folio 11r. Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis). Rosemary’s spiky, evergreen leaves have a pungent aromatic odor and are used to flavor a wide variety of Mediterranean foods. Banker’s Herbal states that putting “the flowers amoung your clothes will keep away moths … crush the flowers and bind them in a cloth under thy right arm and thou shall be light and merry … boil the leaves in white wine and wash thy face therewith … and thou shall have a fair face … put the leaves under thy bed’s head and thou shall be delivered of all evil dreams … Also make thee a box of the wood and smell to it and it shall preserve thy youth.” (2) (B)
Folio 14v. Betony (Stachys officinalis). Antonius Musa, chief physician to the Emperor Augustus, claimed that betony cured 47 diseases and was effective against sorcery. It was planted in graveyards to prevent activity of ghosts. An early medieval herbal states it “shields him against monstrous nocturnal visions and dreams … If a man become tired in mickle riding or in mickle goings let him take betony … seethe it in wine; drink at night fasting three cups full; then he will soon be unweary.” Bancker’s Herbal states that if Betony be “stamped and then laid on a wound in the head … it will heal the wound fair. It is good for all diseases of the head from watery eyes to tooth ache.” (2) (B)
Folio 15r. Sow Thistles (Sonchus oleraceus). The ancient Greek name for these plants was Sonchus. The stem contains a milky latex that is extruded if any part of the plant is cut. The plants were fed to lactating sows in the belief that their milk production would increase. The young leaves are used in salads. They have high vitamin C content and are a good source of calcium, phosphorous and iron. (1) (B)
Folio 16r. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) is one of the worlds oldest crops. “It was prescribed for distended stomachs, dropsy, pains in the anal region, and as a plaster for boils and carbuncles. Applied to wounds it relieved pain, and a decoction of its roots and seeds mixed with white lead and oil of roses was used to treat erysipelas. Only when its vapors were employed to ease a headache did it come close to its modern use as a hallucinogen.” (An Illustrated History of Herbals, F. Anderson, p.94.) (B)
Folio 17r. Swallowwort. There are several plant families to which this name has been applied, but none of them appear to fit the plant depicted in these two illustrations. (B)
Folio 17v. Smilex, is a genus of 300 to 350 species that grow in temperate to tropical zones through out the world. The plant is known in China as China root and in Jamaica as sparsparilla, an ingredient of root beer. It is also used in soups and stews. The berries are an important winter food for birds and small animals and as a jelling agent for jams and jellies. The root contains sapogenins, precursors of steroidal hormones like cortisone and progesterone. Herbalists use the root to treat premenstrual syndrome and skin diseases like psoriasis that are due to a hormonal imbalance. (1) (B)
Folio 18v. Columbine (Aquilegia alpina) is a perennial plant found at higher altitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Bancker’s Herbal states that it is “good for him who hath the quinsy.” Pseudo Apuleius claims that “he who hath this herb with him will not be barked at by dogs. When drunk it driveth away all poisons. When stamped and drunk with ale, will destroy all pestilence.” It is not used as a herb today. (2) (B)
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)
Folio 23v. Borage (Borago officinalis). This herb is used to flavor soups, stews and salads. Bancker’s Herbal states that it will “cleanse the red choler of a man and will destroy abscesses that be gathered of the black choler. Also the water drunketh with wine maketh a man glad and merry.” (2) It is grown today mainly for the oil in its seeds which is the main plant source of some polyunsaturated fatty acids like gamma linolenic acid. (1) (B)