Most flowers have blooms at the end of their stems or at least in places above their leaves. Each spring, however, I encounter Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum), a strange plant that seems to work in a totally different way. Mayapple plants grow in colonies from a single root and stems put out large umbrella-shaped leaves, with usually only a single large leaf per stem. These stems do not produce any flower or fruit.
A few stems, though, produce a pair or more leaves and a single white blossom appears at the juncture point where the stem branches off. If you don’t know that the blooms are there, it is easy to miss them, because the large leaves hide them from view.
Last week during a trip to Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge I checked out several large patches of Mayapples that I had seen in previous years. I think I might have been a little late in the season, but eventually I found a Mayapple plant with a flower that was clearly past its prime. As you can see in the first photo, a harvestman, known colloquially as a daddy longlegs, was camped out on the flower, waiting perhaps for potential prey. For the second photo, I zoomed out a bit to show the unusual location of the flower on the Mayapple plant and the habitat in which these plants grow.
As many of you know, I focus mostly on wildlife creatures in my photography, but my almost insatiable sense of curiosity draws me to anything weird and wonderful that catches my eyes, like Mayapples in bloom.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 