Eggplants?

Does anyone know of web-links to one or more medieval drawings of plants (roses, poppies or otherwise) in the style of plant drawings in one or more of the Marseilles pips cards? Thanks!

Sightings of other plants

I was perusing Marteau's book again. These threads are great, by the way. They get us looking at the cards, which is the good thing!

I cited Marteau on the 'blue protective shell' in a post yesterday.

As well, I note that he is of the view that the two flowers on each side of the central cup in the 5 of Cups are in the form of marguerites [which would translate into English as marguerites or daisies].

I have also pointed out the Marteau sees a poppy in the 3 of Cups.

Alain Bocher sees a pomme de pin [which would translate into English as fir or pine cone] in the 6 of Cups. The pomme de pin is a "symbol of the [alchemical] Work accomplished in its most beautiful perfection". _Cahiers du tarot_, vol. 1, p. 291.

There were already a variety of roses known in the Middle Ages.

rosa canina, or the Dog rose, also known in those days as Mary's Thorn.
rosa centifolia, or the Cabbage rose, also known as Virgin's Rose.
rosa eglanteria, or the Sweetbriar, also known as Our Lady's Leaf.
rosa gallica, or the French rose, also known as Rose of Jericho (the emblem of the House of Lancaster in England.)

There were also other kinds of roses even in those days.

Medieval cultivated roses would look pretty much like wild roses to our 21st Century eyes, according to a medieval web-site which I once found but did not bookmark at the time. They were much smaller and the flower was much more open than our modern roses. Also there were a lot more thorns. They were not our neat little "trees" - they were rambling bushes.

Here's an article, probably most of y'all knew this stuff already, but for anyone's edification: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/rose_gardening/3369

The part where it mentions Mary (as in BVM) makes me wonder, if Tarot is so full of rose imagery, if there's any relation to the Rosary? I honestly and truly had no idea there was such a wide variety of roses, beyond the various colors, as I've said before I am no botanist!

Hopefully the following link hasn't been post before:

http://ridgwaydb.mobot.org/mobot/rarebooks/

At this link, there are some 2800 antique botanical images. Maybe, in there, there is something that might resemble botanical imagery from the Marseilles pips, or maybe not. My quick perusal so far hasn't found any matches.

The blue protective shell thing thus far makes the most sense to me, allowing for it to indeed be a rosebud...I am googling too, and I bet I'm finally gonna find out how many tabs Mozilla can have open at once!

Shalott said:

The blue protective shell thing thus far makes the most sense to me, allowing for it to indeed be a rosebud

Click to expand...

well ... a bud, anyway.

It would be wonderful if there were a trained botanist in the gang, preferably one with a historical botany bent.

Hey - yeah where'd smleite go?

The "gang"...we need hand signals and to wear our baseball caps in some new angle...

Here's a pic that comes the closest to the look of this contraversial THING on the 5 of Cups...http://members.shaw.ca/roxaneleigh/photo/rosebuds.html

Looks about as close to me as the poppy posted earlier by Fulgour. Of course, this is probably a "heraldic" rosebud...I'm gonna have to find that link in the discussion of the 2 of Cups about the "heraldic" fishies.

Rusty Neon said:

Out of the curiousity, I checked the 5 of Cups cards from the 1760 Conver, the 1701 Dodal and the Hadar. In the case of the 'eggplant' (or 'rosebud'?) in the Hadar 5 of Cups, Hadar follows the lines of the 1760 Conver quite closely, although he changes the colour usage. There's no need for you to have to take Hadar's botanical views as the final word; he has no special inside knowledge that other well-known Marseilles authors don't have; Hadar adds elements to his deck but the 'eggplant' ('rosebud') wasn't one of them. In fact, nobody has special knowledge of the features of this deck; they just get it from observing the cards; read the commentaries but in the end, trust your own observations.

For what it's worth, Paul Marteau, writing concerning the 'eggplant': "The flower at the top, in its blue protective shell, shows that there is still gestation to undergo that will permit it to attain the Seven through the Six."

Click to expand...

I am posting hereafter two posts. The first one is in French, and the English translation which I have made of it follows in the second one. I have done my best to translate it properly, but if any bi-lingual person thinks I should change something, please please let me know.

These two posts are the response of Kris Hadar to the quoted post above by Rusty Neon.