04.17.20 Elephant Flip Flops

Giant green footprints suspended above the spring mud is the image in my mind when I find these leaves creating their own miniature palm forest. This is Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum, idiosyncratic stunner. It’s genus name actually does mean “foot leaf” (for some reason shortened by Linneaus from  Anapodophyllum “duck foot leaf”… go figure). When you stumble upon a colony of mayapples, often in a damp, wild place, like this steep slope leading down to a stream, you will be surprised to learn that what may look like several hundred plants is actually all one plant! Growing from the network of a single rhizome these leaves pop up through the winter’s detritus. Each stalk carries either one leaf or a pair, but only the paired leaves produce this exquisite bloom. The bloom will later produce an unusual fruit which happens to be a favorite of the eastern box turtle. Box turtles are reportedly one of the major distributors of these seeds!

Illustration from Walther Otto Muller’s Kohler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, 1887.