Mayapple

Today is going to be our first plant that is what I would call “intermediate”. It’s one of those things that isn’t going to be common enough to feed a family but is a nice treat on a late summer day!

Mayapple (also called “fairy umbrella”) is an intermediate forage because of how it can be toxic when eaten the wrong way (which I’ll dive into) so let’s check it out:

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Podophyllum peltatum

Preferred Habitat: Shady, mature, mixed-hardwood forests (or areas that used to be mature hardwood forest), typically not far from a seasonal creek or stream.

Edible Parts: Ripe fruits ONLY!

Distribution: Eastern half of the United States and Canada

Harvest Season: Beginning of late summer when the fruits are fully yellow

Key Identifiers: Distinct umbrella-like leaf structure, small yellow fruits dangling underneath, white flowers in the spring.

Toxic Look-Alikes: While there are no look-alikes to speak of, this plant is actually toxic when you consume the wrong parts or in excess amounts.

Nutrition: No significant nutrient content is known about mayapples so here are the medicinal uses:

• Cathartic

• Emetic

• Anthelmintic

• Topically removes warts and similar dead tissues

• Derivative compounds may treat some cancers

• The toxins are also used to make some very important medicinal compounds even by the WHO’s standards.

Use

This is the first plant we have talked about in a while that has some fairly limited uses.

Mayapple fruit when ripe can be made into jelly or eaten fresh. The plant in general can be used for some topical medicines (ie. don’t consume it!) but most of that is ancient Native American knowledge and I’d need to do some deep digging to find any information on how to use it.

As far as eating it goes, I ate well over 50 in a few days with zero ill effects last year, but you should take it much slower than I do. My stomach is used to wild foods and can handle a fair amount more than someone who is new to it!

I’ll reinforce this below but it’s just the pulp on the inside of the fruit that is edible, do NOT take a bite out of the peel.

You may be wondering why someone would want to attempt to find this fruit if it requires this much time and effort right? Well, it’s because of the flavor.

The pulp of mayapple tastes like a tropical starburst!

Growth Habit

Mayapple grows in large patches that peak in spring and start to die back over the course of the year.

I normally start finding ripe fruits in the first week of August in mid-Michigan, but the exact time will vary from year to year and by location.

You might start to notice mayapple absolutely everywhere. You might be tempted to think that this makes it common and while that’s true of the plants, the fruits themselves are not so easy to find. For whatever reason, you will almost always only find fruits on plants that branch into a “Y” shape and even then you will only find 1-2 per plant.

This might be because a patch is usually one large underground rhizomatous root that sprouts new small plants above ground, but it’s hard to know more than that.

I have a few patches that I keep an eye on and I have seen a bunch of flowers in the spring only to find nearly no fruit at all by the time they are ripe. (I suspect that some animals like the unripe fruits and they just have a low pollination rate.)

That said, you can still find a lot some years in one patch. Last year one patch yielded over 30 fruit for me (although I don’t expect that to happen again this year).

Toxicity

Now the important part.

Mayapples can make you very sick. It likely won’t kill you, but you will be in a pretty bad way if you get poisoned. Symptoms include:

• Vomiting

• Diarrhea

• Headache

• Fevers

• Lethargy

• Extreme salivation

  And occasionally:

• Coma

The plant itself can sometimes be irritating to people’s skin, so I recommend wearing gloves when handling it (even though I tend not to).

I want to reiterate: the ONLY edible part is the pulp gel around the seeds on the inside of the RIPE fruit!

I cut the fruit in half, slurp out the insides like you would a passionfruit, suck the pulp off the seeds, then spit the seeds back out. If you swallow one seed or two you will probably be fine (I’ve swallowed a few and never noticed any signs of poisoning and had friends who have done the same).

The fruit when RIPE will be yellow all over, and slightly soft. Look for ones that have brown spots on them for best flavor and least risk.

As far as I’m aware there are no known cultivars to grow, however there IS a breeding effort being done by the Experimental Farm Network

An interesting note:

Many plant species start out highly toxic like this and eventually get bred to have low or no toxins at all in them (I think of tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes as examples). I believe it is entirely possible to breed a mayapple variety that has nearly no toxins in the fruit at all and can be eaten similarly to a passionfruit; seeds and all.

For more information on how that could work, check out this article about seeds and breeding.

Housekeeping Notes

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