Nothing else in the woods looks remotely like this charming plant. Each plant carries one or two umbrella-like leaves. If it has two leaves, it plans on blooming; one leaf means it will not bloom this year, and we have known whole patches where every plant stubbornly refused to bloom for years on end. You have to lift the leaves or stoop down to see these flowers, but the effort is worth it.
The plant is poisonous, but the fruit of the Mayapple or Mandrake is edible in small quantities, if you get it when it’s really ripe; but even ripe fruits are toxic in large quantities. The best advice would probably be to enjoy the plant as one to look at rather than one to consume.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
PODOPHYLLUM L. MAY APPLE. MANDRAKE. Flower-bud with
three green bractlets, which early fall away. Sepals
6, fugacious. Petals 6 or 9, obovate. Stamens twice as
many as the petals in our species; anthers
linear-oblong, not opening by uplifted valves. Ovary
ovoid; stigma sessile, large, thick and undulate.
Fruit a large fleshy berry. Seeds covering the very
large lateral placenta, in many rows, each seed
inclosed in a pulpy aril. Perennial herbs, with
creeping root-stocks and thick fibrous roots. Stems
2-leaved, 1-flowered. (Name from pous, a foot, and
phyllon, a leaf, probably referring to the stout
petioles.)
P. peltatum L. Stamens 12-18; leaves
5-9-parted, the lobes oblong, rather wedge-shaped,
somewhat lobed and toothed at the apex. Rich woods, w.
Que. and w. N. E. to Minn., and southw. May.
Flowerless stems terminated by a large round 7-9-lobed
leaf, peltate in the middle, like an umbrella;
flowering stems bearing two one-sided leaves, and a
nodding white flower from the fork; fruit ovoid, 2.5-5
cm. long, ripe in July, sweet and slightly arid,
edible.
