XXII.— THE HERB PARIS. 
Paris quadrifolia Linne. 
I N woods, especially those of Ash and Beech, on warm well-drained soils, generally 
distinctly calcareous, we may find the Herb Paris, a local or somewhat uncommon 
plant with several characters of considerable structural interest. It is, no doubt, 
often overlooked when growing in the midst of Dog’s Mercury ; but in some 
woods on the Cotteswolds I have seen it practically replacing that usually much more 
abundant species. 
It has a long, slender, white rhizome, much like that of the Lily-of-the-valley, 
which grows a little below the surface of the soil in a monopodial manner, i.e. 
continuously in a straight line, the aerial stems being produced laterally. These 
erect aerial stems, springing from the axils of leaf-scales, may reach a foot or even 
more in height, though the plant often occurs in a stunted condition, only reaching 
a few inches. Specimens are recorded from Harefield, Middlesex, of a yard or more 
in height. The stem is round, tapering, and of a dull dark green, and the whole 
plant is destitute of that gloss which is so general among Monocotyledons and 
especially among Liliace<e. At the summit of the aerial stem, which, it will have 
been perceived, is really a branch, is a whorl of leaves. As these are the only 
foliage-leaves borne by the plant we term them leaves, though it is not easy to 
discriminate morphologically between them and the whorl of three leafy organs 
similarly placed below the flower in the genus Anemone , which is termed an involucre. 
As the specific name quadrifolia indicates, our species has generally four leaves in a 
whorl. An exotic species, P. polyphylla , has ten or twelve leaves in a whorl ; and where 
our species is abundant, perhaps as many as one per cent, of the plant will vary by 
bearing three or five, six, seven, or eight leaves. In the five-leaved examples we 
have sometimes found the extra leaf below the rest, though it is generally in a 
whorl, i.e. at the same level with them. It is, however, to the typical whorl of four 
that the plant owes most of the names by which it is known. Gerard, for instance, 
speaks of it as having 
“fower leaves directly set one against another, in maner of a Burgunnion crosse or a true love knot; for which cause among 
the auncients it hath beene called herbe Truelove ” ; 
and Dr. Prior pointed out that this is also the true etymology of the name Herba 
Paris , which we owe to Matthiolus ( 1 5 8 3), and which we have translated as Herb 
Paris. This is not, as has often been said, derived from the Latin adjective par , 
equal, because there are an equal number of leaves in each of the floral whorls, but 
from the substantive par , a pair, in the possessive. The name, therefore, means the 
Lover’s plant, and the word paris should have been written with a small p. 
The leaves spread horizontally and are three to five inches long, broadly ovate 
or elliptical, acute, glabrous, shortly stalked, with from three to five principal 
longitudinal veins which branch and anastomose or unite their branches in a manner 
