A woodland plant I
prefer is the curiously named, curiously shaped Herb Paris. If we
can talk of "English" plants, then Herb Paris (which I first saw in a wood in
Normandy) has an English individuality. I know it every year in small patches, on
mossy ground under hazels and oak trees, in a Wiltshire wood, ten or eight plants to
a patch. There is no other plant at all like it in England. It is a surprise, and an elegant
oddity, with its flower stem curving up from the centre of its four regular leaves, its
yellow thin petals showing off its big, black ovary, which turns into a blacker and
bigger berry. "One Berry" is the name it was first recorded by in 1548.
Herb Paris embodies
much of what I look for in a wild flower. It has a range from the
Mediterranean to the Arctic, and into Asia. It is not, with us, too pushing, or too rare,
too much talked about, or too remote from an individual appeal to one's own feelings.
So it comes high in
a list of the good plants to look for every year, in which I include
fritillary, wood anemone, sainfoin, restharrow, Cornish moneywort, bugle, woodruff,
bogbean, deadly nightshade, henbane, greater celandine, viper's bugloss, orpine and
rnusk mallow, mistletoe, and an isolated spindle tree, standing free, away from a
hedge, in fruit.
Geoffrey Grigson
