Reading Voynich botany

Here I set out two examples of how to approach the Voynich botany. 

My proposal is that this botany is based upon the ways in which plants - growing by divisions - duplicate or imitate the divisions of the ecliptic and resulting cosmic cycles.

I also propose that the relevant celestial orientation is given to us in the initial glyph of the page, which in the case of the herbal pages is always a gallows glyph. 

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Example One: folio page 11v

The text begins with the gallows glyph [p] which, by my account, signals the VERNAL EQUINOX. 

This page, and the plant illustrated, concern the spring equinox. 

We see this in the flowing red sap of the plant - the vital energy of the spring. 

The equinox [p] causes the plant's morphology to bifurcate and divide down to binary duality. 

That is what is being illustrated in the top of the plant: binary duality.

All divisions and dualities are reduced to equal night and equal day by the equinox. 

Again: the top of this plant displays the equal night/day alternation of the equinox. 

The stems - full of red vital force, the FIRE of spring (Aries) - have suddenly bifurcated, then divided again, down (or up) to binary duality. 

The plant's morphology has the signature of the vernal equinox. 

It may or may not be a real plant - in whole or in part; but wherever in plant morphology we find this behavior - rapid growth, sudden bifurcations culminating in binary duality - we see the imprint of the equinox. 

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A second example, this time concerning a plant of the solstice. Folio page 9r. 

This page is headed by the gallows glyph [t] which, by my account of it, signals the WINTER SOLSTICE.

Accordingly, this page is about the winter solstice and about the corresponding plant morphology. 

The point of interest here are the conspicuously crossed roots. 

This is the botanical gesture that shows the imprint of the solstice. 

The solstice is the turning point of the sun. On appearances, the sun stops, and then goes in the opposite direction.

We find this gesture in the roots of some plants. 

This is what this illustration depicts: the way in which the roots of plants - following and growing with the track of the sun - will suddenly reverse and become cross-rooted - the signature of the solstice. 

Here is another example of it, on page 11r, also a page headed by the glyph [t] = the winter solstice. 

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In essence, it is not a complicated system. It merely requires that we be sensitive to the cycles of the solar year and the corresponding patterns in plant morphology (and allow that the four gallows glyphs mark the four quarters of the year.) 

R.B.