[3] It consists of coloured illustrations of 117 plants drawn by William Hooker, with explanatory text by Richard Anthony Salisbury.

The title page of the first volume and part bears the date 1805 and identifies the illustrator and publisher as Hooker.

[4] The International Plant Names Index dates the parts as follows:[2] The Paradisus Londinensis (abbreviated to Parad.

[7] He had bought Linnaeus's entire collection of books, manuscripts and specimens, and founded the Linnean Society in 1788.

[9] In his 1807 work, An introduction to physiological and systematical botany, Smith had used newly discovered plants from the west coast of British Columbia, Canada (plants which he did not name) to support the view that the tepals of lilioid monocots were actually sepals, since their flowers had what Smith regarded as six internal petals.

[10] In The Paradisus Londinensis, in the notes to number 98, dated 1 March 1808, Salisbury named these plants as the genus Hookera with two species H. coronaria and H. pulchella.

)[12] George Boulger, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, says that Smith's actions were deliberately intended to deprive Salisbury of credit for the genus Hookera.