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
Nemophila breviflora long, pointed, and edged with stiff hairs, and there are reflexed appendages between the sepals. The bell-shaped flower corolla is white or purple-tinged and a few millimeters wide. The fruit is a capsule which develops within the calyx of sepals and contains a single red, pitted seed. Nemophila breviflora Nemophila breviflora is a species of flowering plant in the borage family known by the common names basin nemophila, Great Basin nemophila, and Great Basin baby-blue-eyes. It is native to southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States, where it generally grows in wooded and forested areas in thickets and moist streambanks.