Mayapple of my eye
The mayapple flower (below) is easy to miss as it blooms under the plant’s wide, lobed leaves. Adam Bigelow photos
I love coming across a large patch of mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) while walking in the woods in the spring. They are beautiful in all stages of growth. Early on, when they first emerge from the soil, they look like turtles poking their heads up. Fully open they look tiny umbrellas at a fancy beach. And as they start to fade, they turn a beautiful shade of yellow.
Mayapples have large round leaves — one or two, depending on the plant’s age — that grow on a single stem. The immature plants have a single leaf that lays flat atop the stem, with 5 to 9 lobes radiating out from a central point. The leaf is a shiny green with a white circle in the center. Once the plant is old enough and has enough stored energy to make a flower and fruit, it’s as if that single leaf splits in half, and two leaves emerge, forking off the central stem, each with single lobed leaf and half a white circle on the inward side where the leaf splits.
And in between these two leaves, in the fork or axil of the stem, is where you will find the flower and later the fruit. Although the flowers are relatively large and bright, they are easy to miss because the flowers hang downward under the broad lobed leaves. If you know to look or just happen to notice them, you’re rewarded with beautiful flowers that have creamy white petals and yellow pistils and stamens in the center.
I recommend crouching down, or even carefully laying down next to some and looking up at the flowers. You’ll have a turtle’s-eye view of them. And if you’re lucky, you might catch a bumblebee or another pollinating insect looking for a meal. If you can’t crouch down that far, try getting your camera down low to get a picture. The flowers are definitely worth it.
Eating the roots, stem, leaves and flowers will make you very sick, as all parts of the mayapple are toxic. All parts, that is, except for the ripe fruit, which is delicious. The unripe fruit? It’s toxic. The ripe fruit, however, are good and safe to eat if you know when to harvest them. The fruits start out glossy and green and ripen to a golden yellow. To get some, you’ll have to beat the turtles in a footrace.
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Turtles are the main carriers that mayapples use to spread their seeds away from the mother plant. Turtles love eating the fruits, then slowly walk away with a belly full of them. After digesting the fruits, the turtles then plant the seeds surrounded in a rich fresh fertilizer to aid their growth. Animal dispersal is a common method plants use to help spread their seeds and increase populations.
There is a wave of mayapples that grows up the hill by my house. The patch follows the hill’s contours like a stream flowing down the mountain. Their leaves shine of silver in the morning dew and light. I celebrate their return each year, excited to see the leaves emerge, andI love showing their flowers to people who may have never seen one before. They are spectacular.
