John Clayton Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society’s
Wildflower Spot – May 2007
MAY-APPLE
Podophyllum peltatum
Long grown by southeast gardeners, this
perennial has a long history, going back to Linnaeus
(Swedish botanist responsible for our two-name system) who
named it. Supposedly he saw resemblance between the leaf
and a duck’s foot and so called it “foot-leaf”, podo
being Greek for “foot” and phylum meaning
”leaf”. Imaginative American children have called them
“green umbrellas”.
May-apples do well in any good garden
soil with added organic matter and filtered sunlight or
partial shade. If properly planted in a friendly
environment, may-apple is a superb groundcover, rapidly
covering problem areas of bare earth, even slopes where
erosion is a problem. Over a few seasons the plants will
merge. Propagation is by seed and the rootstocks, which can
be divided almost any time.
The large, deeply divided leaves are
usually some nine inches across, sitting on top of a
foot-high stem, with leaf overlapping neighboring leaf. The
nodding white flowers are hidden beneath the leafy canopy,
and bloom only on plants that have two leaflets. By
mid-summer a fleshy, yellowish egg-shaped fruit about two
inches long appears, again hidden by the leaves.
The fruit is edible when ripe, but all
other parts of the plant are toxic. The roots produce a
toxic action on cell division and have been used in
anti-cancer therapies. But when eaten with abandon the
plant can lead to death. Amerindians made an insecticide
from powdered roots.
Sometimes after periods of rainfall in
midsummer, the may-apple leaf becomes spotted with
orange-yellow spots, from a fungus. There is no treatment
and the plants quickly recover.
May-apple is sometimes called
hog-apple, mandrake or wild lemon.
Written by Helen Hamilton, President of the John Clayton
Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society
