# Herb Paris (Paris quadrifolia)

**Herba Paris**

**Known today as.** *Paris quadrifolia*, true-lover’s knot, a woodland plant with a single black berry.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Saponin irritation (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/saponin)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

The seeds, a dram a day for twenty days, “heal the bewitched”; in an electuary (ch. 6).

## What does modern science say?

Herb Paris was long believed an antidote to poisons and to witchcraft. The plant is poisonous in large doses, causing vomiting, vertigo, delirium, and convulsions; it has no place in modern medicine.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **paridin and paristyphnin**: steroidal saponins
- **pennogenin glycosides**: 
- **diosgenin glycosides**: 

**Mechanism.** The whole plant, and most the berry and seed, carries steroidal saponins that irritate the gut and in quantity slow the heart and cause headache and narrowed pupils; Canale’s dram a day for twenty days is a dose that would make the patient ill. The Chinese relative *Paris polyphylla* (chonglou) is a pharmacopoeial haemostatic.

**Dose.** A few berries give vomiting, colic, and headache; fatal poisoning is not recorded in adults.

**Standing.** No approved use in Europe; *Paris polyphylla* is in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its folk name, true-love’s-knot, comes from the four leaves, which form a shape read as a lover’s knot or a Burgundian cross; “Paris” is neither the Trojan prince nor the city but the Latin *par*, “equal,” for those four matching leaves. By the doctrine of signatures its single black berry was read as an eye, giving oil distilled from it the folk name “the soul of the eye” and a reputation against eye disease.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Culpeper.** Describes the four leaves “set directly one against another, in manner of a cross or ribband tied (as it is called in a true-loves knot),” the star-like flower with its “round dark purplish button or head,” and the single “blackish purple berry, full of juice, of the bigness of a reasonable grape.” “Venus owns it; the leaves or berries hereof are effectual to expel poison of all sorts, especially that of the aconites; as also, the plague.” He cites Matthiolus “that some that have lain long in a lingering sickness, and others that by witchcraft (as it was thought) were become half foolish, by taking a dram of the seeds or berries hereof in powder every day for 20 days together, were restored to their former health.”

## Sources

- Wellcome Collection, on herb Paris.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Herb True-Love, Or One-Berry.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Frohne, D., and Pfänder, H. J. (2005). *Poisonous Plants*, 2nd ed., “*Paris quadrifolia*.”
- Ding, Y.-G., et al. (2021). “The traditional uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological properties of *Paris* L.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 278.

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*Herb Paris.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/herb-paris

Historical description, not medical advice.