Botanical and Toponymic Contexts of Voynich Manuscript Folio 33v: Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), Lombard Agronomy, and Evidence from Riccardiano MS 2147

Botanical and Toponymic Contexts of Voynich Manuscript Folio 33v: Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), Lombard Agronomy, and Evidence from Riccardiano MS 2147 This study examines the botanical illustration on folio 33v of the Voynich Manuscript within the context of medieval Mediterranean botany and agricultural history. The analysis evaluates the hypothesis that the plant depicted may correspond to cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), a cultivated thistle widely documented in medieval agronomic literature. Morphological comparison between the Voynich illustration and botanical descriptions preserved in medieval agricultural texts is combined with philological and archival contextualization. Agronomic terminology preserved in Biblioteca Riccardiana MS Ricc. 2147, a fifteenth-century agricultural manuscript, includes references to thorned plants described using expressions comparable to cacti rami. In medieval Latin botanical terminology, the term cactus was often used generically to describe thorned plants rather than the modern taxonomic cactus genus. The study further situates the botanical imagery within the agricultural landscape of late medieval Lombardy, drawing on documentation preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Milano, particularly the Fondo Notarile Antico, which records land transactions associated with the Pieve di Dervio and the territory of Dorio on Lake Como. These records demonstrate terrace-based agricultural systems characteristic of mountainous northern Italian landscapes during the fifteenth century. Rather than proposing a definitive botanical identification or decipherment of the Voynich text, the study presents a historically grounded contextual interpretation integrating botanical morphology, medieval agronomy, codicology, and regional archival documentation.