Iowa wildflower Wednesday: Mayapple fruit

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

I reached down to touch the yellowing fruit. I only noticed it because the leaves it was hiding under were withering away.

At my touch, the fruit dropped into my hand. It was soft.

So the Mayapples were ripe.

A month or two ago I had seen quite a few fruits hidden beneath the Mayapple leaves.

Now they were gone.

In spring, long before the apples, white Mayapple flowers in bloom

Clearly, someone ate them. I won’t say stole, even though this happened right in my garden. Raccoons and deer have been eating Mayapples in Iowa since long before this was called Iowa.

Box turtles are reported to eat them too, in some places, although we don’t have box turtles around here.

I took the fruit into the kitchen and started to cut it with a sharp knife. The skin came away like a loose jacket, and wow, what a pronounced odor! Something like pineapple, but with a musky, earthy undertone. It was rich and tropical and so distinctive that I know I’ll recognize it instantly next time I smell it.

The flesh of the fruit was a soft, yellow sphere. It was globby like tapioca but translucent. It looked and smelled like it was meant to be eaten.

Soft, ripe, fragrant fruit

photo of fruit cut open

I know that people make jelly from the ripe Mayapples. I also know that every other part of the plant is poisonous, including seeds, stems, leaves, and even the fruit before it ripens. Fully ripe fruit pulp is the one part generally considered edible. Nevertheless, I was too timid to touch my tongue to it.

Now that I’ve been reading recipes for Mayapple preserves, and the rave reviews about its flavor, I wish I had tasted the fruit I opened.

Mayapple’s tricks

Not a bad strategy. While the fruit is green, it is hidden under the leaves.

Green, unripe fruit

When the seeds are ready to be dispersed, the fruit softens, turns yellow, and advertises itself with its Come-eat-me aroma.

I’m imagining a raccoon poking its inquisitive nose under the Mayapple leaves and detecting the scent of ripe fruit. Raccoons are good partners. Some Mayapple seeds survive passage through a raccoon’s digestive tract and actually germinate better afterward. The raccoon also carries the seeds away and disperses them at a distance from the parent patch.

Deer eat Mayapple fruits too, often before they ripen, but they are mostly seed predators. Very few seeds survive passage through a deer.

And the seeds?

I separated out 26 seeds, cleaned away the clinging pulp as best I could, and never let them dry out. Mayapple seeds lose viability if they are allowed to dry.

Seeds encased in pulp

I planted them immediately, one or two to a cell, in six-packs of seed-starting mix and covered them with about ¼ inch of soil.

My growing box is like a cold frame with a wire-mesh top. It lets in rain and snow but keeps chipmunks and other diggers out. The seeds will spend a normal Iowa winter there, much as if a raccoon had planted them in the woods.