Podophyllum peltatum Seeds | Mayapple Root

Categories：(Root/ Flower /Fruit/ Leaf /Medicinal Animal)

Mayapple with a nodding white flower beneath paired leaves — Mayapple (*Podophyllum peltatum*): Berberidaceae, native to eastern North America.

LATIN NAME: Podophyllum peltatum

COMMON NAME: Mayapple

Plant Profile

Podophyllum peltatum is a woodland plant of eastern North America, sending up a single paired leaf on a stalk thirty centimetres tall, with a white flower nodding beneath it in May and a green, lemon-shaped fruit in late summer. It grows in colonies from a creeping rhizome, and a patch may be a century old.

Every part except the ripe fruit is toxic. The rhizome contains podophyllotoxin, a compound that stops cell division by binding tubulin, and it is the reason the plant has a place in oncology as well as in folk medicine. The fruit is the only part that is safe to eat, and only when it is soft and yellow, not green.

Science & Biotechnology

Podophyllotoxin is the starting material for the semi-synthesis of etoposide and teniposide, two drugs still used in testicular cancer, small-cell lung cancer and some leukaemias. The chemical step is a glycosidation and epimerisation that turns a tubulin inhibitor into a topoisomerase II inhibitor, a different mechanism from the parent compound.

The plant itself is dangerous. Podophyllin resin, a crude extract, is used topically for warts and must not be applied to broken skin or taken internally. Ingestion causes vomiting, neuropathy and bone marrow suppression, and the compound is a teratogen. The resin is applied as a paint rather than a cream, and the surrounding skin is protected with petroleum jelly, because the material burns healthy tissue as readily as the wart.

Uses & Benefits

Topical podophyllin is still used in some countries for anogenital warts, applied by a clinician rather than at home. The ripe fruit is eaten in parts of Appalachia, but only when fully soft and yellow, and the seeds and skin are discarded.

There is no safe home use of the root. The traditional reputation as a purgative belongs to an era before dose and toxicity were understood, and the margin between a therapeutic and a dangerous dose is very narrow. The plant should be grown as an ornamental and handled with gloves. The fruit is eaten raw in the Appalachians, and it tastes of a mild, slightly acid mango when fully ripe.

Growing from Seed

Seed has a double dormancy and needs eighteen months to two years to germinate, with warm then cold then warm again. Fresh seed sown in a shaded frame and left alone is the usual method.

The rhizome is easier, though plants resent disturbance and may take two seasons to reappear. Give deep leaf mould, shade and moisture, and expect a colony to build slowly. Seedlings take five to seven years to flower, which is why nursery plants are expensive and why wild digging is both damaging and usually illegal. Slugs are the main pest on new shoots, and a copper ring around the clump helps in wet springs.

Our Take

A woodland plant of real pharmacological importance and real danger, worth growing for the spring flower and never for the root.

(Root/ Flower /Fruit/ Leaf /Medicinal Animal)