PODOPHYLLUM PELTATUMAnd will any poet sing
Of a richer, lusher thing
Than a ripe May-Apple, rolled
Like a pulpy lump of gold
Under thumb and fingertips,
And poured molten through the lips?
James Whitcomb Riley,
RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD, 1890
MAYAPPLES are herbaceous perennials that grow to 11/2 feet tall in the eastern woodlands and produce a round, edible fruit. Some say mayapples taste like lemons, and they do have a lemony, acidic note to them. But more noticeable is their floral fragrance and a sweet flavor that’s almost too sweet. The 19th-century botanist Asa Gray des-cribed this flavor as “somewhat mawkish, beloved of pigs, raccoons, and small boys.” Gray was right about that—when the fruits are ripe, you will have to beat the raccoons to get them. Except for the ripe fruits, every part of the plant, including the unripe fruit and seeds, is very poisonous and was used by Eastern Native Americans as a purgative and emetic.
Although their fruit does not often reach markets, mayapples are fairly ubiquitous, growing in areas that receive decent summer rainfall anywhere east of the Rockies from Canada to Florida. The woods’ edges and old fields returning to forest around my boyhood home were lavishly colonized by mayapples, which we boys called “umbrella plants” because each plant’s single stem rises about 6 to 10 inches above the ground, then splits into a Y shape, the split stems hoisting two broad leaves another 6 inches or more above the split, which together resemble an umbrella held above the ground. These leaves hold themselves parallel to the ground, and a colony of these wild perennials looks like a group of umbrellas waiting
for a rain.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
There is no commercial culture of mayapples. If you find them, they have been gathered from the wild.
SEASONALITY
Between April and June, depending on latitude, a single white flower with yellow stamens emerges from the split in the stem. After pollination, a small, egg-shaped green fruit grows, and by September reaches the size of a small hen’s egg, turning yellow as it ripens and the plant itself begins withering. It’s only edible at this stage.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
I have seen them sold at roadside stands, usually gathered from the woods by farm boys to make pocket money. If you find mayapples at a stand or gather them yourself from the woods, make sure the fruits are yellow, soft, and ripe.
STORAGE
Eat soon after you find them.
USES
Mayapples are mostly eaten fresh out of hand, but they can be seeded and made into jams, jellies, and marmalades. The interior of the very fragrant fruit—it has a sweet, almost cloying aroma—is jelly-like, with seeds that must be spit out.
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