Yup! That’s exactly it 100% Podophyllum peltatum.
And it’s sending a flower bud too!
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Nice! Did you build this for mayapples to keep animals from eating the fruits? Or to stop deer from pulling up roots (Note that I’ve never seen them do this nor have I ever seen a mayapple pulled up by it’s roots despite the High deer population where I live but apparently deer love to pull mayapple roots?).
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This is actually in a park on the outskirts of Louisville. The building behind it is an educational center. I assume it’s there to keep animals and curious children out?
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probably, you could ask the people who maintain it about it. Maybe they are also breeding mayapples?
I’ve seen mayapples around but never caught the bloom or the fruit. Today, saw lots in bloom on local trails. Around when do they ripen in the mid Atlantic?
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Nice! They bloom only in areas that recieve more sunlight, hence why you might’ve never caught them in bloom/fruit.
I’m in the Mid-Atlantic region, I always harvest Mayapple fruits when unripe & just starting to show first signs of ripening, this happens in Late July for me. They ripen at home safely & taste fantastic!
This is how I ripen them at home, it takes 1 month to get most of them ripe. I pick each fruit one by one from the fruit bowl as they ripen.
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That is great to know. I had been interested in trying these fruit, but other members on the forum had indicated that wildlife kept beating them to the ripened fruit. I know where there are several patches around, I just have to determine which have enough sunlight to produce fruit and I can harvest them and ripen them at home.
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There’s a ton of mayapples growing under walnuts where I walk my dog. Also tons of them along various trails in the area.
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Indeed, I’m almost certain it’s because most people haven’t tried picking the fruits green (at first sing of color change) & letting them finish ripening at home.
That’s not too hard, you might still see some with flowers (usually plants flower only in areas with enough sunlight). Thus if you saw flowers, it’s likely there will be fruit also (especially if you see fruit forming already which depending on which part of the country you are this could very well already be the case).
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We foraged for mayapples today along the trail where we saw them in bloom in spring. Kids were good are finding them, and then I had to do a dance amidst the poison ivy to grab them. One is nearly ripe and the rest are ripening. The ripe one smells like paw paw. We’re going to let it sit a bit more before trying because I’m paranoid. And, stupid question- do you just scoop and eat?
Gave a few to the nature center at the trailhead for the rescue turtles. Apparently, the turtles love them as they hang at the perfect height for them to chomp.
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How exactly do people eat these? The yellow one was very ripe today, cut it open and then got super frustrated attempting to separate out any pulp from the seeds. Maybe the larger ones will be easier? We might be donating them to the squirrels
Don’t worry about separating the pulp from the seeds before eating. It’s easy to suck the pulp off the seeds after some gentle chewing (to avoid crushing the seeds). Then just spit the seeds out.
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Thank you. I didn’t realize this was the only way to eat them. I can do this. I don’t trust my kids to.
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Nothing paranoid about it, this is just basic saftey with eating mayapples, only eat fully ripe fruits that turn fully yellow, are soft & fragrant.
To eat them, simple tear the fruit in half, suck the pulp & spit out the seeds. Each seed is surrounded in delicious pulpy seedgel. It’s very much like eating passionfruit except you aren’t trying to bite or crush the seeds (otherwise they release a nasty bitter taste).
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I wound up with a few ripe fruits from mayapples I dug and potted this spring and summer. Interestingly the ones dug pre-flowering (mostly about at emergence) didn’t set any fruits. All of my ripe fruits came from digging plants in the summer that had already set fruit.
I picked them when they were showing the slightest tinge of white and they ripened on the counter in about a week.Sure enough, they taste great. My technique for eating differs slightly. I like to peel the paper thin skin off so that I can bite into the whole fruit as the outer flesh is nice too.
I saved the seeds so I can stratify and plant them in winter/spring. Ill soak them in a few oz of water for a week or so, changing the water periodically. The goal is to get all of the remaining pulp and membrane off of the seeds to remove germination inhibitors and prevent rot/decay. The seedlings are pretty puny the first year, IME. They do best grown en masse and separated the second or even third yr
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