RE: Cheshire Plant Paper
-JKP- > 01-05-2020, 09:13 PM
Aga, I was very careful to say Paris quadrifolia when I was talking about the one with four leaves.
Paris can have many leaves, but only the Asian and far-east Asian varieties. The ones with many leaves do not grow in Europe. They do not grow very well in west Asia either.
Every once in a rare while you will see Paris quadrifolia with five leaves, but it is like finding a four-leaf clover, it is rare, 6 leaves is very rare. You will not find a 10-leaf Paris in the west in the Middle Ages. Even 8 would be very very unusual (almost impossible).
In east Asia, most of them were 6 or 8 leaves, sometimes 10, but the ones with 10 leaves are not common. It's not the kind of plant that was heavily traded between east and west. And it's not the kind of plant that can be easily harvested, dried and shipped like cloves or cinnamon (it is not easily cultivated outside of its preferred habitat).
There are no drawings of Paris quadrifolia with more than four leaves in any of the western medieval herbals. I have not seen more than four leaves in any Greek or Arabic herbal, either—always four leaves. The 14th- and 15th-century illustrators and writers were not familiar with species other than Paris quadrifolia.
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I do agree with you that a Paris quadrifolia with more than 4 leaves might be seen as magical. They did think that way in the Middle Ages (some people still do). But why 10 leaves? Would it be to exaggerate it to make a point? Or to hide it to confuse the viewer? There are other plants with more leaves and with berries or round seed husks (although the "berry" does look like a Paris seedhead). Why are those never considered as a possible IDs?
If a plant does not look like the drawing (the VMS drawing does not look like Paris quadrifolia), then the person identifying it should give reasons for why the ID is different from the plant. Cheshire didn't do this. He didn't even use correct pictures. Some of them are pictures of Aconitum (which does not look like Paris).