Morphological diversity of wild medicinal Paris L. from China and Vietnam

Abstract

Paris L. (Trilliaceae) is a temperate genus of about 24 perennial herbaceous species distributed from Europe to Eastern Asia. Paris is notable in China for its medicinal value. An investigation was conducted to determine the variations of 27 morphological characters of 196 accessions from 8 populations of medicinal Paris from China and Vietnam. Variations of qualitative and quantitative characters showed high diversity in medicinal Paris. The first four principal components in the principal component analysis explained 59.36% of the total variation among 8 medicinal Paris taxon. The clustering of the accessions based on morphological similarity reflected their geographic origin. Overall, the results would be provided for the conservation and sustainable utilization of this medicine resource.

Key words: Morphological characterization, genus Paris resource, wild medicinal plant, conservation.