Achlys (plant) these plants include vanilla leaf (sometimes written as vanilla-leaf or vanillaleaf, depending on the taxonomist or flora), deer's foot and sweet after death, referring to the vanilla scent of its crushed leaves. The Plant List recognizes two species, with "A. californica" regarded as a subspecies of "A. triphylla" "Achlys triphylla", known in western North America as vanillaleaf, is an erect perennial plant that sprouts from a creeping rhizome. Leaves are long-petioled and palmately divided into three leaflets. Flowers are small and lack sepals and petals, but instead have long showy white stamens that form single erect spikes. The leaflets give
Cliffortia have arisen at four independent occasions. Trimerous flowers have three sepals of variable size, and in male flowers six to many stamens. Tetramerous flowers have four sepals of 5 mm long at most and either four or eight stamens. In female flowers the sepals are united at their base to form a calyx tube, and have one or two styles, that are finely divided like an ostridge feather. One or two achenes may develop in each flower, within the inflating calyx. The first who mentioned species that are currently assigned to "Cliffortia" was Leonard Plukenet in 1696. Names published before