Description from
Flora of China
Daiswa Rafinesque; Euthyra Salisbury; Kinugasa Tatewaki & Suto.
Herbs perennial. Rhizome slender or thickened. Stem erect, simple. Leaves 4 to many, very rarely 3, in a terminal whorl, petiolate, lanceolate to ovate, with 3 main veins and anastomosing veinlets. Flowers bisexual, solitary, terminal, pedunculate. Tepals 3--8, in 2 whorls, free; outer ones green, rarely ± white, ovate to lanceolate; inner ones linear or occasionally absent. Stamens 8--24 or more, 2--8 × as many as tepals; filaments narrow, flat; anthers basifixed, often with convex connective apically. Ovary subglobose, 1-loculed with parietal placentation or 4--10-loculed with axile placentation. Style short; stigma lobes 4--10. Fruit a berry or a berrylike capsule, indehiscent or loculicidal, several to many seeded.
The rhizomes of many species are used medicinally in China.
Also see JI Yun-Heng, ZHOU Zhe-Kun & LI Heng. 2007. Four new synonyms in the genus Paris (Trilliaceae. Acta Phytotax. Sin. 45: 388-390.
About 24 species: Bhutan, China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Sikkim, Thailand, Vietnam; Europe; 22 species (12 endemic) in China.
(Authors: Liang Songyun (梁松筠 Liang Song-jun); Victor G. Soukup1)