@Professor_Porcupine can weigh in here. He said they ripen if they have a little color on them if I recall (similar to tomatoes) but I may be misremembering
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WOW! Those are the biggest Mayapple fruits I’ve ever seen, fantastic genetics!
Definitely save seeds from those on top of the rhizomes.
I can guide you thru saving Mayapple seeds step by step as I’d love to get some too.
@Fruitfanatic All of those mayapples will ripen sitting on the tray like you have in the last photo. I’d only recommend you spread them out for better airflow & occasionally flip them around so they don’t rot before they fully ripen (Due to lack of airflow).
Especially those with some color showing will continue to ripen off the plant (Even the ones that are too green have a very good chance of fully ripening). From the photo, most of these look like they are starting to show color change which is exactly when you can harvest them to ripen off plant later.
Both, the best Mayapple Patches are in full sun areas & likely those areas allow the best genetics to survive for fruit production to survive. I’m likewise also interested to see the next generation (Likely at least half of the offspring will carry those traits).
Yes please! I’m curious about the fruitskin to pulp ratio too! Might this be an surviving semi-wild landrace originally bred by Native Americans?
Yup! You remember correctly, as soon as they show color change it’s a safe bet they will ripen well off the counter. Even those that don’t show color may eventually ripen but it’s not as guaranteed as those that show a lil color change.
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I’ve yet to get a ripe mayapple this year. Critters eat them all.
I happened to have a trail camera on one of my patches. Threw together a quick time lapse gif the them growing.
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Are you 100% sure it’s critters or just lack of sunlight not making any fruit possible?
If it is indeed critters, just harvest the fruits unripe. Critters will not eat them unripe thus you can harvest them green & ripen at home to enjoy fruits.
Yo, that’s awesome! I love this gif, seeing Mayapples throughout the season is Beautiful! Very interesting to see the season transition.
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I’m sure, there was so much fruit a few weeks ago, even in dense shade locations! I very rarely ever see a fruit get past the first stage of ripening where it transitions from dark green to light green before they dissapear.
I saw a green one in another patch a few days ago, I’ll go pick it if its still there and attempt the counter ripening!
I can plan to update the gif in a few weeks to capture the senescense of the plants. Already starting to look pretty ragged. Maybe I’ll pull the hd images off the sd card instead of these super compressed blurry image. Probably will also be able to better see what animals were eating the fruit…
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I’ll save lots of seeds. Is there more to it than cleaning the pulp off of the seeds and then storing them in moist peat moss or moist sand in the fridge?
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Yes, 1 more step. Send a postcard to prof porcupine with some seeds 
I’d suggest storing some dry. Storing them in moist peat moss/sand is ideal if you plan to plant them soon (they need need cold/wet stratification to sprout supposedly). But with so many it may be worth trying both dry and wet storage just in case something goes wrong
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If that’s the case, maybe the fruit falls off before it fully ripens or Animals are on crack risking death for eating unripe mayapples 
.
Usually animals go after those that have a smell & leave the unripe ones alone, so it’s very odd indeed.
Nice! Go for it, might as well pick any others that remain.
True, yo what if it’s another forager 
, maybe you might find a new friend.
Fantastic! I clean the seeds by simply eating the fully ripe fruits.
- I tear open a fully ripe fruit (Full Color with Delicious Smell).
- Suck up all the pulp while discarding the skin.
- Spit out the seeds onto a plastic tray or table (Not Paper Towel as seeds will stick to it & not come off when they dry).
- Wait for seeds to dry so they can be stored.
If you plan on eating every Mayapple fruit & spiting out seeds, you can save a bunch of seeds. Alternatively if you have ridiculous amounts of Mayapples, I’m sure you can tear into each fruit & Scoop out the pulp. Then run it thru a strainer (Seeds are relatively big enough to stay while keeping pulp).
I never done the strainer method with Mayapples, I’ve just eaten them & spit out the seeds to dry.
Moist peat moss or moist sand in fridge is not required. They store fine in dried in Plastic ziplock Bags. But if you want to plant some right away, pick a good spot & direct sow them (Or spit out seeds strategically where you want more mayapples as you eat them).
Yes please!
I agree! Out of curiosity, you can try both & see which germinates faster vs which stores longer, ect.
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Hmm. I have a ton of these on my property line and didnt know ehst they were. Time to investigate.
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I harvested some this year from some notably productive patches with decent sunlight, I stored them with bananas and they ripened from green with just a touch of white to a solid yellow.
Nice very unique flavor, definitely tropical notes, well balanced, not cloying or sour
There was and is still a ton of unripe fruit but I have never in my life seen one past the green just starting to turn white stage.
I think they ripen from that stage fast enough on the plant that the animals just eat it the second they are ripe
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Has anyone personally sprouted Mayapples from previously dried seeds?
I was told they have to stay moist. Nate Kleinman recommended I “leave them in their own juice to ferment”, but I don’t recall having much luck with that method either.
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This is a choice mayapple that was grown from seed by taking the seed from a slightly overripe fruit and planting the seed 1/4-1/2” in a canopy of eastern pine in early fall. The mayapple came up in the spring after two dormancy periods.
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It might not have been two dormancy periods, but likely the first year of growth was too small to notice.
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They are bigger than I expected. I thought theyd be quarter/nickel sized. Especially on a young plant.
Here are photos of the first large mayapple compared to more typical sized mayapples. It looks like the large mayapple is filled with pulp in the same proportion as the smaller ones… its extra size isn’t composed of empty cavity space. The big mayapple is a bit more ripe than the others, so it is more squishy.
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@Fruitfanatic how’d they taste?!!
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All were good with typical mayapple flavor
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I agree, they remind me of Pineapples with notes of Passionfruit.
Perhaps, even if they show just some white you are good to pick!
I haven’t personally tried sprouting mayapples seeds yet (Unless you count spitting out seeds in places where they will grow).
I was told pawpaws couldn’t sprout from dried seeds but I managed to sprout them.
I suspect Mayapple seeds is in a similar situation, so I might as well give em a try (Even if I end up trowing them away due to not having land for them to grow on).
That being said, don’t give up on them if they don’t sprout immediately, they need multiple thaw & freeze cycles to break dormancy.
Unlike Mango & Citrus seeds that die & crumble apon drying, mayapple seeds dry very nicely (Same with Pawpaw seeds).
Fermenting isn’t required (I think Nate didn’t think to eat the fruit, hence his fermentation recommendation).
@DawnChorus Very nice Mayapple! Excellent Size & Color! Did it taste good?
@Fruitfanatic Fantastic! Excellent fruit to pulp ratio. Hoping to keep expanding on that trait, I suspect thoroughly pollinated fruit are the bigger ones (Cuz they contain more seeds). Reguardless if we keep selecting for larger fruit, we will eventually get there (Without having to know the exact genetic reason behind it).
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The great mayapple fruit processing event happened today. It took about three hours. We had Two batches of mayapples from two different clonal plants harvested two weeks ago. The fruits rested on the counter in trays, one fruit deep, and ripened over those two weeks. The fruits lost some mass and wrinkled over this time, and filled the house with a strong and pleasing aroma.
We removed the pulp my kneading the fruits to soften the interior and then tearing off the blossom end and squeezing out the pulp. Further, some additional seedless pulp could be scraped from just under the skin of the fruit. The fruit was collected and pooled by plant source.
After the pulp was removed from the fruits it was strained with a Victorio food strainer.
We had two different screws on hand, one more aggressive than the other.
We processed fruit from Plant A with the red screw and fruit
from Plant B with the orange screw. We used the same standard sieve for both batches.
Fruits from Plant A were slightly less ripe than from Plant B
The seed mass was run through the strainer four times to remove as much pulp as possible.
Plant A, with the larger, less ripe fruits yielded about twice as much as Plant B. Plant A had overtones of pineapple dominating the aroma while Plant B had pineapple notes and a strong passion fruit aroma. The red screw was gentler on the seeds which is important to avoid extracting podophyllotoxin from the seed. There was seed damage at the far end of the orange screw when processing pulp from Plant B. Seed from plant A was soaked in milk to further remove flavor from adhering pulp, while the clean seeds of Plant B were stored in peat for stratification. The Victorio food strainer really made this process efficient, as we used to simply press the pulp through a plastic seive with a spoon.
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Fantastic! You took it to the next level as I’ve never processed them like, I just ate them just like that.
I find it very interesting the fruit ripened into a dull off-white yellow. The ones I had ripened to a much deeper yellow, so maybe 1) your mayapples are very different from my local ones or 2) different stage of unripe harvest creates different skin colors?
Was the pale yellow fruits from batch A?
Ah intertesting, did it taste good? I’ve always avoided that part cuz I thought it was part of the skin & thus discarded.
Interesting flavor difference, could this be because Plant A was a little less ripe compared to Plant B or is it purely genetic?
Indeed, but it seem to have work out pretty good. If I ever find a bunch like this I may also try extraction (If I don’t eat all of them first ). I would’ve simply put those seed pulp leftovers in my mouth to further clean them off, I never done the milk thing so idk how that would go.
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