Mayapple, Mandrake, fruit edible when totally ripe, toxic otherwise.

Podophyllum peltatum: Forgotten Fruit

The first time I saw a mayapple I was certain something that strange had to be toxic, and it is, unless totally ripe.  In fact, all parts of the plant except the very ripe fruit are quite poisonous. Another plant which is like that is the Natal Plum. 

Ripe Mayapple

When unripe the Mayapple resembles a lime. Then it turns a soft yellow and wrinkles a little, see to the right. That is ripe. The rest of the plant is also often dying at that time as well. Trim off the ends, do not eat the seeds. If you cook with it remove the seeds first. Recipes below.

Other parts of the Mayapple have had a wide range of medicinal uses with native Americans. It is, however, a powerful plant and not to be used lightly: The Indians also used it to commit suicide.  Two drugs are made from the Mayapple, etoposide and teniposide. Etoposide is for testicular and small-cell lung cancer, teniposide is used in conditions like brain tumors and infancy leukemia. For those of us old enough to remember “Carter’s Little Liver Pills”  Mayapple was a main ingredient that made the pills a laxative and had nothing to do with the liver at all.

Carter’s Pills used Mayapples as a laxative.

Its botanical name is Podophyllum peltatum (poe-doe-FILL-um pell-TAY-tum) and means “foot leaf like a shield.” The leaves resemble a duck’s food — it was once called that — and they tend to hide the flower and fruit, shielding it. The Mayapple usually grows in colonies in leaf-losing forests, meaning it likes to grow in the shade.  The taste is exotic, or peculiar, opinions vary

Other local names include: Raccoon Berry, Wild lemon, Ground Lemon, Hog Apple, Indian Apple, Wild Jalap, Duck’s Foot, Umbrella Leaf, and Wild Mandrake though it is not related to the Old World Mandrake, Mandragora officinarum. The Himalayan MayApple, Podophyllum hexandrum aka Podophyllum emodi, reportedly has edible leaves as well.

Green Deane’s “Itemized Profile

IDENTIFICATION: A perennial plant is 1–1½’ tall, some unbranched with a single leaf on a long stalk, others produce two leaves. Stalks light green, round, hairless. leaves, umbrella like, to one food long and across; palmately lobed, 5-9 lobes per leaf, deeply divided, hairless. Blossom a single, waxy, creme-colored flower with six to nine petal, below the leaves. Fruit egg-shaped, green when unripe turning yellow when ripe.

TIME OF YEAR: Blossoms in spring, fruit available in late summer depending on climate, July through September. Usually collected in northern areas when the trees are losing their leaves.

ENVIRONMENT: Moist forests, meadows, flood plains, forest openings, from Quebec to Florida, west to Texas and Minnesota.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Trail side nibble, the basis for a cold drink, jelly (add pectin) compotes, marmalade, pies and a sauce like applesauce. Mayapples can be canned and they freeze well. Do not eat the seeds. Remove them before cooking. Use them to grow more Mayapples. Over-eating can be mildly laxative. WARNING: DO NOT CONSUME WHEN PREGNANT.

Mayapple Jelly

1 3/4 cups Mayapple juice; strained

3 1/2 cups sugar

1/8 cup lemon juice

3 oz liquid fruit pectin or one dry packet

Wash ripe mayapples, cut away the stem and blossom ends, and any waste parts. REMOVE SEEDS. Cut the fruit into pieces and place in a large kettle with water to cover. Bring to a boil, then simmer until mayapples are tender, mashing during cooking. Strain the juice through a cheesecloth or let it drip through a jelly bag. To the strained mayapple juice, add lemon juice and sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly, then stir in pectin. Again bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and boil hard until the jelly stage is reached. Remove jelly from heat, skim, and pour into hot, sterilized jelly glasses. Seal at once with hot paraffin or lid in hot bath. Double the recipe if you have plenty of mayapple juice. The amount used in this recipe is the yield of about 2 cups of sliced mayapples simmered in 3 cups of water. Yield: Four small glasses of pale amber jelly

 Mayapple Jam

5.5 cups ripe Mayapple fruit              7 cups sugar

1/2 cup water                                    1 package pectin

1/2 cup lemon juice                            dash of salt

Combine mayapples, water, and lemon juice. Bring to boil, cover over low heat, simmer for 20 minutes. Stir often. Add sugar and bring back to a boil. Boil hard for three minutes. Add pectin and salt and boil for one minute. Stir and skim off foam. Ladle into sterilized jars, seal with lid or paraffin.

Mayapple Punch

3 cups rip Mayapples fruit              1 cup sugar

3 pieces of ginger root                   1 quart ginger ale

Cut up Mayapples, REMOVE SEEDS. Put Mayapple pieces and ginger root in a saucepan, cover with water, and slowly bring to a boil. Simmer 25 minutes. Add sugar. Set aside to cool but stir occasionally. Pour through sieve and press pulp through mesh. Spoon into cups and fill cups with ginger ale. Stir and serve. Depending upon your tastes. Some think it tastes like an earthy banana or pawpaws. It makes excellent preserves and drink.  Since woodland creatures like the fruit as well it can be collected just before it is ripe and stored in sawdust until ripe.

Mayflowers, Trailing Arbutus

Epigaea repens: Spring Sentinel and Nibble

It was an annual family ritual. Every spring when the snow had finally melted we’d go through the low Maine mountains picking the first bloom of the season, Mayflowers, Epigaea repens.

Green Deane as a sprout and mother Mae about 1951

Mind you, we didn’t eat the blossoms though they are edible. They make a pleasant and refreshing trail side nibble. The collecting was more primal. After a long, hard winter we just took the green and fragrant plants home as a reminder of spring. In fact, my mother had her favorite Mayflower haunts and we would visit them all in the course of the short season. She picked them because her mother picked them as did her mother’s mother.  Gathering Mayflowers is also where I first heard about “Robin Hood’s Barn.”

My mother said, “you’re certainly going around Robin Hood’s Barn to get there.” My father, driving, said he was. To which I asked about Robin Hood’s Barn. My mother told me to be on the look out for it. Never did see it. It took me years to learn that “going around Robin Hood’s Barn” was taking the long way around.

When I moved to Florida and smelled orange blossoms for the first time in the night air I thought they were Mayflowers. They are also known as Trailing Arbutus. In 1856 James Greenleaf Whittier wrote the poem, “The Mayflowers.”  It is below. Whittier had received a gift of Mayflowers on April 30th that year. A note with the flowers said, “You know the Mayflower with us is the flower, and all our people gather them at this season and send them to their friends who have them not. There is such meaning in the Mayflower to all descendants of the Pilgrims and to all lovers of freedom.”

Though Greek it so happens that through one great grandmother, May Eudora Dillingham, I am a Mayflower descendant and also a descendant of Susanna North Martin, who was hanged in Salem, 1692, charged with being a witch. One of May Eudora’s claims to fame — besides being a forager — was as a child she heard Abraham Lincoln speak. She said he had a high voice.

Epi means “upon” and gaea means “earth” Epigaea (ep-uh-GEE-uh) upon the earth. Repens (REE-penz) means crawling or growing along the ground, a low profile. Arbutus (ar-BRU-tus) means struggle. They are protected in some areas, such as Florida and New York.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: Shrub to a few inches high, trailing, puts out roots at the joints, evergreen leaves, broadly ovate, 1 to 1 1/2 inches long, rough, leathery, with wavy margins and a point at the end. Flowers at the end of branches in dense clusters, white, with a reddish tinge, very fragrant, five petals form a star.

TIME OF YEAR: Flowers in April and May

ENVIRONMENT: Damp, shaded, mossy rocky woods; prefers moist, acidic soil, and shade. Found in Eastern North America, Central Europe, and Western Africa. Nearly impossible to transplant

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Blossom petals eaten fresh on the trail or in salads.

James Greenleaf Whittier

The Mayflowers

1856

        James Greenleaf Whittier

Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,

And nursed by winter gales,

With petals of the sleeted spars,

And leaves of frozen sails!

What had she in those dreary hours,

Within her ice-rimmed bay,

In common with the wild-wood flowers,

The first sweet smiles of May?

Yet, “God be praised!” the Pilgrim said,

Who saw the blossoms peer

Above the brown leaves, dry and dead,

“Behold our Mayflower here!”

“God wills it: here our rest shall be,

Our years of wandering o’er;

For us the Mayflower of the sea

Shall spread her sails no more.”

O sacred flowers of faith and hope,

As sweetly now as then

Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,

In many a pine-dark glen.

Behind the sea-wall’s rugged length,

Unchanged, your leaves unfold,

Like love behind the manly strength

Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons,

Their sturdy faith be ours,

And ours the love that overruns

Its rocky strength with flowers!

The Pilgrim’s wild and wintry day

Its shadow round us draws;

The Mayflower of his stormy bay,

Our Freedom’s struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring

To life the frozen sod;

And through dead leaves of hope shall spring

Afresh the flowers of God!

Maypop, Passiflora incarnata

Maypops: Food, Fun, Medicine

As popular as they are, Maypops get stepped on a lot, but that doesn’t keep them down.

They are one of five hundred kin in the passion flower family, specifically Passiflora incarnata (pass-siff-FLOR-ruh in-kar-NAY-tuh.) Passiflora  means “passion flower” and incarnata means “in the flesh.” A relative, Passiflora edulis (pass-siff-FLOR-ruh ED-yoo-liss = edible) is used to flavor Hawaiian Punch. When the flowering vine was first discovered by Spanish explorers in  Florida in 1529 the shape of the blossom captured their imagination and they described it as a symbol for the “Passion of Christ.”

Passiflora foetida

Passion flowers do have complex blossoms. P. incarnata is two to three inches across with 10 white tepals in a shallow bowl with a fringe of purple and white filaments, called a corona. The center is a white stigma with five stamens. The vine is long and trailing with three-lobed leaves.  The vines blossom for a long time and  set fruit over the same period so one vine can have old and young fruit at the same time. Shaped like a egg, the fruit starts out green and hollow and eventually fills with a kind of jelly and seeds while also turning yellow on the outside.  Finding the fruit is rather sporadic since woodland creatures like them as well and dine at night. Caution: Maypops’ green skin is edible raw but too many can burn the mouth. The rind is better cooked. The pulp-covered seeds in a green or yellow maypop are quite edible.

“Maypops” is a two-season name. Here in Florida and other parts of the south they can blossom in May. But the fruits don’t get big enough to step on and “pop” until June or July. The name comes from “maracock” which is what the Powhatan Indians called it. And though thought of a “southern” wild fruit, Maypops grow as far north as Pennsylvania and west to Kansas, south to Texas, central Florida and Bermuda. Under cultivation P. incarnata likes full sun to partial shade, light, evenly moist soil. Deciduous, it can take temperatures down to 5F. In the wild they grow in sunny areas with good drainage, at the top of a berm, not the bottom. Many caterpillars like the Maypop including the Gulf Fritillary and Zebra Wing Butterfly.

Passiflora lutea

If you find a tiny passion flower that is off yellow with small fruit that’s deep purple/black when ripe, it’s the Passiflora lutea (LOO-tee-uh = yellow) edible but not too tasty, used to make ink. It likes to grow in wet areas. Don’t mistake it for a wild cucumber,  Melothria pendula, which have leaves that smell like cucumber. When M. pendual’s fruit is black it’s the Mother of all Laxatives.  The Passiflora suberosa (sou-ber-OH-sah = corky) with blue fruit is also edible (the fruit.)  The Passiflora foetida, common in south Florida, has red fruit as is edible as well, quite tasty with very thin skin.

Oddly, while native to North America, Maypops are far more popular in Europe. Americans used make jelly out of them,  Native Americans cooked the leaves in fat.  Europeans currently make pharmaceuticals. The fresh and dried whole plant has been used to treat nervous anxiety and insomnia. It is the most common ingredient in herbal sedatives in Europe. In Europe a teaspoon of dried, ground plant is used in a tea. Even a sedative gum has been made with Maypop. The active ingredient(s) is unknown. See the “herb blurb” below. Perhaps the Maypop vine is medicinal: It smells and tastes bad, as does most medicine that is good for you. What does the vine smell like? Like an old rubber shoe. The fruit, fortunately, does not share that…. too much.  Oh, and this will not make sense until you consider the general shape of the leaves and fruit: The Maypop is a relative of the papaya.

Other Passifloras with edible fruit include: P. alata, P. ambigua, P. ampullacea, P. antioquiensis, P. caerulea, P. coccinea, P. cumbalensis, P. x decaisneana, P. edulis f. flavicarpa,  P. laurifolia, P. lingularis, P. maliformis, P. manicata, P. mixta, P. mollissima, P. organensis, P. pinnatistipula, P. platyloba, P. popenovii, P. quadrangularis, P. serrato-digitata, P. tripartita, and P. vitifolia.

Lastly, the Internet is the Great Garbage Can of Misinformation and amateur writers. Of late sites have been proliferating the nonsense that Passiflora incarnata has cyanide in it. It categorically does not. The American Pharmaceutical Association Practical Guide to Natural Medicines by Andrea Peirce states: “Unlike other Passiflora species, … [the] Passionflower does not contain the poison cyanide, as some sources incorrectly suggest; they may have mistaken Passiflora incarnata for Passiflora caerulea, the ornamental blue passionflower that does contain this toxin.”

Passiflora foetida does have some cyanide in it as evidenced by some research on goats feeding on the foliage. However, I have eaten a fruit or two at a time with no problem. Goats, of course, eat leaves so they can get a higher concentration of cyanide. The passion fruit used in Hawaiian Punch, Passiflora edulis, has to be limited to goats as well, less than 45 percent of their feed.

I would add that cooking or sometimes mascerating green parts of edible plants with small small amounts of hydro- or glycocyanides releases the cyanide. Also note the “Herb Blurb” below. P. incarnata has some MAO inhibitors. MAO inhibitors and chocolate should not be combined.

Maypop Jelly

2 cups ripe maypops, sliced
1 cup water
2-1/2 cups sugar
1-3/4 ounces pectin

Combine the maypops and water, and boil gently for five minutes. Strain, discarding the pulp. Combine the liquid and sugar and bring to full rolling boil. Add pectin, and again bring to rolling boil. Remove from heat, pour into hot, sterilized jars, and seal. Makes 2-1/2 pints.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile

IDENTIFICATION: (Passiflora incarnata) The passion flower is a woody vine that grows up to 30 feet long and climbs with tendrils. It has striking, large white flowers with pink or purple centers. Leaves are three lobed and the fruit egg-shaped going from green to yellow or orange when ripe.

TIME OF YEAR: In Florida it starts fruiting in June with early fruit ripening around August. Farther north the ripening is towards fall. Can be propagated by seed or cutting, cuttings are slow to root.

ENVIRONMENT: Maypops grow in thickets, disturbed ground, unkept pastures, roadsides and railroads. They like full sun and water but good drainage. You will not find them in damp areas.

METHOD OF PREPARATION:Green and yellow ripe maypops off the vine, though larger green ones are better than small ones. They can be made in to a jelly or an ade.  Green ones better cooked than raw, yellow ones are nice raw. Leaves can be cooked like a green. With other passionflower eat only the fruit.

HERB BLURB:

According to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Website: Derived from the aerial parts of the plant. Patients use this herb to treat insomnia, anxiety, epilepsy, neuralgia, and withdrawal syndromes from opiates or benzodiazepines. The active component of passionflower is unknown. The alkaloid components (e.g. harman, harmaline) are thought to produce monoamine oxidase inhibition, while the maltol and gamma-pyrone derivatives cause activation of GABA receptors (4). Reported adverse events include sedation, dizziness, impaired cognitive function, and one case report of nausea, vomiting, and ECG changes. All adverse events subside following discontinuation of passionflower (7) (8). Theoretically, passionflower may potentiate the sedative effect of centrally acting substances (e.g. benzodiazepines, barbiturates, alcohol) (10). A small pilot study evaluated passionflower for generalized anxiety and showed comparable efficacy to oxazepam (8), but a systematic review concluded that randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm such effects (12). Passionflower may be of use in combination with clonidine for opiate detoxification, but additional research is required. No standardization exists for passionflower extract, therefore dosages and activities may vary.

Milkweed Vine, Araujia odorata

 Araujia odorata.: Menace or Manna?

One spring I was looking for poke weed when I spied a liana I had not seen before. It had a large fruit that looked like a chayote, but it wasn’t a chayote. I took it home, but was doubtful. It was clearly in the milkweed family and local vines in that family aren’t edible.

Araujia odorata’s blossoms

A couple of hours of researching and I identified the plant, a horrible weed of no redeeming value. It was first spotted in an Orange grove owned by Donald. J. Nicholson near Orlando (Florida) in 1957, apparently an escaped ornamental though the original plant was never found so how can they say it was an escaped ornamental? I suspect it was for food. I subsequently found a 1971 report that said it was cultivated in Pasco County Florida in 1939 and escaped from there and was first seen in a citrus grove in 1957. That’s when it came to the state’s attention and why it was “discovered” in 1957.  Whether 1939 or 1957 it started showing up in the lower two-thirds of the state threatening citrus groves. It climbs on the trees and reduces their production, can even kill them via shade. There was no mention of it in Cornucopia II or Edible Plants of North America or any other of the five dozen books I had.  So I disposed of it and deleted my pictures.

A few months later someone on a forum wondered what it was called. I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t find it again on the Internet. About a year after I first found it I was still irritated that I hadn’t found it again. I worked on it for several hours one day until I hit pay dirt.  This time I also found one reference to it as being edible.  That opened the door. The report was in the Journal Economic Botany, and they wanted some $38 to download the article. As I as going to Tarpon Spring for the annual Greek epiphany event — 132 miles away — I dropped by the University of South Florida on my way back (USF was named when Tampa WAS south Florida.) I rummaged around the bound copies of the journal and found the article. It said the Morrenia odorata ( now called Araujia odorata) was very edible. Highly esteemed in South America. I wonder how that was missed all these years in Florida?  A January 2007 report on the plant by the state does not mention edibility.

In the Journal of Economic Botany Professor Pastor Arenas says all of the “Morrenia” species are edible. To quote the researcher:

“The fruit is the plant part most commonly eaten, but, with the exceptions of the roots, all the other organs are consumed, though the different ethnic groups vary in their preferences… The resource is prepared in various ways: Either raw, in salads, boiled, or roasted. Non-indigenous settlers use only the fruit and seeds, with which they prepare several dishes, including “doca jam,” a regional dessert made with the fruit…. The indigenous population considers it to be a very wholesome food and, despite the loss of many elements of their traditional diet, this plant continues to be highly valued. Although it is a wild plant, it is protected and even cultivated by several ethnic groups….”

According to Arenas’ monograph three native tribes eat the flowers raw. Sometimes they boil the vanilla-scented flowers, squeeze out the extra water, then mix them with oil. One group pounds the flowers and young leaves in a mortar with a little water and salt, making a salad.  Three groups eat the leaves raw, another takes the leaves and the young shoot ends and make them into a crown shape. They boil it in a pan. Then the ring is drained and eaten dipped in oil. Two groups form the raw leaves, stalks and flowers into a bunch to use to absorb a preparation made of salt, wild pepper (Capsicum chacoense) and water. The bunch is dipped in the liquid and sucked until the liquid is gone.

Charles Morren, 1807-1858

Arenas reports the tender, immature fruits, (which I will call a vegetable) are eaten without preparation. They are consumed whole and raw. Sometimes they are mashed in a mortar, seasoned with salt and pepper. One group mixes the mashed fruit with cactus (Opuntia chakensis) which resembles bitter lemon.  Not that much raw fruit can be eaten at one time because the latex in the vegetable can irritate the mouth. The seed and hairs (coma) of mature vegetable are not eaten. Depending upon the age of the vegetable it is boiled or roasted (30 minutes or so) and usually eaten with oil.

The soft stems and the ends of young shoots are often eaten with the leaves and flowers. The adult stem is a famine food, boiled until soft, the outside removed, and then eaten with oil. No fibrous or woody parts are consumed. The vine bears continuously so there can be young and mature pods on the same vine. They are collected with a long pole with a hook on the end, similar to how Ear Tree pods are collected. Extra vegetables are roasted then split in two, dried over heat or in the sun then stored once desiccated. They are reconstituted by a brief boiling then eaten with oil.

The A. odorata has other uses besides culinary. The sap can be used to curdle milk for cheese making, and there are numerous medicinal applications as well.  A decoction of the plant plus roots was used to induce lactation. The latex is used to remove warts, calm toothaches and used against snake bite. The plant, interestingly, is toxic to cows and usually fatal. The sap can be used as a glue.  Nutritionally the vegetable is close to squash but has a Vitamin C content closer to citrus. In fact, it has more Vitamin C than oranges.

While a staple food in Brazil and Argentina (first described in 1838) in the United States it is a “weed,” that is, on nearly every possible weed list, federal to state to local. It’s a costly vine to the citrus industry and efforts continue to find ways to kill it off. Incidentally, monarch butterflies like it but it is also a breeding ground for flies that ruin papaya.

Edmond Albius

Odorata means sweet-smelling or fragrant. Morrenia was a bit of a challenge. It was named for Belgian botanist Charles Morren, (1807-58) a professor at the University of Liege. Morren discovered how to artificially pollination vanilla. Folks had tried for 300 years to do it. His method is still the one used, per se. What he did was watch the flower. A tiny sociable bee without a stinger — the  Melipona Bee– came along, lifted a little flap and went into the flower. It is the only insect that does that.  But it took a 12-year-old slave, Edmond Albius, to figure out a simple way to do it with a little stick and his thumb.  So the genus should be called Albiusa but instead it is now Araujia. Why? Who knows  but its new name is after Portuguese botanist António de Araújo e Azevedo, 1st Count of Barca (1754–1817). 

My friend, Marabou Thomas, says cooked the vegetable tastes “like some crazy combination of potato and zucchini marinated in honey.”  My older pallet doesn’t pick up the honey notes but it is delicious. I am convinced that if folks knew how tasty the Araujia odorata is the state would not have to spend millions to keep it in check.

In extreme southern Florida or farther south you might confuse the Morrenia odorata with Cynanchum cubense. The blossoms of  the C. cubense do not have star-like sepals.  Also north of Florida don’t confuse it with the Cynanchum laeve, which has similar leaves and vine but smooth milkweed-like pods. I get a huge amount of mail from folks finding the Cynanchum laeve thinking it is the  Araujia odorata. They read “milkweed” and “vine” and don’t bother to learn that A. odorata fruit looks like a roundish squash, and C. laeve is a smooth pod.

Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile: Milkweed Vine

IDENTIFICATION: Araujia odorata: A perennial, leaves grow in pairs on stems, grey-green, slight fuzzy texture.  New leaves on new growth heart-shaped to 5 inches, older vines pointy, broad base, smaller. Flowers greenish-white,  small, five small petals, fragrance reminds some of vanilla. Fruit large seed pod, resembles a chayote, or a papaya, or an avocado in shape, mature pods 5 to 6 inches long, 3 to 4 inches wide, green until ripe then yellow, tan, or brown, will split open.

TIME OF YEAR: Blooms heavily in mid-spring, fruits continuously, can over winter if no frosts or freezes.

ENVIRONMENT: Rain forests to dry forests, groves, anything it can climb on, bushes, trees, fences, wires.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Numerous: Young leaves, fruit, flowers and shoot tips raw, older fruits boiled or roasted in embers (usually 30 minutes)  Older stalk boiled and peeled.  Older green fruit can be dried and preserved.  Unripe seeds and coma are edible. Ripe seeds and coma are not edible.  When roasted the inner rind flavor is similar to squash. When boiled it is more like zucchini/potatoes.

There used to be a video on You Tube of  women collecting, preparing and eating the Araujia odorata in Argentina. Apparently that has been deleted. Here is my video about it.