The Mayapple - by Paul Andrews
All over our woods, you will notice mayapples poking up. They are sometimes called "umbrella plant" because the first sign of them in early spring are shoots that look like a closed umbrella. The mayapple has many other names too:
American mandrake, wild lemon, ground lemon, hog apple, devil?s apple, Indian apple, raccoon berry, duck?s-foot, and vegetable calomel. The Choctaw Indians called it "crow pumpkin" because the crow, feeds on its fruit.
When the shoot reaches about a foot tall, the "umbrella" slowly opens until it reaches about a foot across. May apple grow under deciduous trees in moist open woods and form colonies that often cover large areas of the forest floor. Plants that have a single leaf do not flower, while those with two leaves develop a single creamy-white flower that hides beneath the leaves where the stems join and is about an inch long. The flower is eventually replaced by a small green egg-shaped fruit that grows to the size of a ping-pong ball and turns yellow when ripe. The ripe fruits have a sweetish lemon-like taste that can be sickening. The plant withers away by mid-summer.
May apple was first introduced to the settlers of the New World by the Native Americans, who used it in treating various disorders. In New England the root was used to treat stomach disorders, warts, skin cancers, and intestinal worms. It was used to treat diarrhea in chickens and as a poison for eliminating chipmunks! Hurons and Iroquois Indians used may apple for committing suicide. Today the roots, leaves, seeds and green fruit are considered poisonous and you should not handle the plant or try to eat the fruit.
Twenty to thirty years ago, scientists discovered that extracts of mayapple could kill cancer cells. The most active ingredient was given the name podophyllotoxin. To try and make this substance easier to give as a drug to people , chemists modified it to produce the compounds called etoposide and teniposide. The modification completely eliminated the original way in which podophyllotoxin killed cancer, but fortunately the new compounds attacked cancer by a brand new mechanism. This is what scientists call serendipity, or pure dumb luck! Today etoposide and teniposide are very important drugs for treating cancer.