Flora Unveiled

264 i Flora Unveiled

A thirteenth- century German herbal combined elements from Dioscorides and
Apuleius.^17 The German herbal is similar to the Anglo- Norman herbals in that most of the
plant illustrations are highly stylized and unrecognizable (Figure 10.9).
It was not only the poor illustrations that made the medieval herbals botanically
useless; the written descriptions were also badly garbled. Many of the plants discussed
in the classical sources and later Arab texts did not even grow in northern Europe— a
fact unknown to local physicians— and misidentification was common. According to
Karen Reeds, herbalists during this period tended to regard all physical descriptions as
“u nt r u s t w o r t hy ”:

The deficiencies of the plant descriptions only reinforced the common philo-

sophical contempt of appearances and particulars of the sub- lunary world. Color,

shape, texture, taste, smell— these were all accidental, untrustworthy bases of

knowledge.^18

Little wonder medieval physicians made scant use of the elaborate herbals commissioned
for the aristocracy, preferring instead to depend on the accumulated folk wisdom of local
herb gatherers.
Disconnected from their original purpose as practical field guides, medieval herbals were
judged less by their accuracy and more by the standards of medieval decorative art as exem-
plified by illuminated manuscripts. The purpose of illuminations was to enliven the text
and entertain the reader. An example of the complete divorce from reality can be seen in the
miniature painting entitled “Spring Landscape” (Figure 10.10) from the Carmina Burana
Codex, an early thirteenth- century collection of drinking songs, satirical poems, and short
theatrical works written in Latin by the Goliards, a group of free- thinking university stu-
dents. The plants in this landscape appear bizarre, alien, and surreal, suggesting that the
intention of the artist was not to portray everyday reality, but to reveal the mystical spirit
of springtime normally hidden from our eyes. In other words, it was a Neoplatonic spring
landscape.
Compared to the fantastic vegetation in such works as Spring Landscape, even the most
schematic illustrations in medieval herbals must have seemed like paragons of accuracy.
How else to account for the otherwise inexplicable remark attributed to a sixteenth- century

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 10.6A–C Seventh- century Latin herbals of Apuleius. Comfrey (Simphytum sp.).