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Posts Tagged ‘Podophyllum peltatum’

Mayapple blooming in April

Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, spring, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2023| 3 Comments »

Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) are strange plants. Most of the time they grow in colonies and each plant has a stalk and a single umbrella-shaped leaf. Occasionally, though, the stem will branch off and there will be two leaves. In those cases, a single flower may emerge at the intersection of the two branches of the stem.

According to the Wisconsin Horticulture website, “The nodding, white to rose-colored flowers appear in April or May. Each flower is 2-3 inches wide, with 6 light green sepals, 6 to 9 waxy petals, and twice as many stamens with white filaments and yellow anthers. Although the flowers are quite showy, they are short-lived and usually hidden by the leaves. The flowers are fragrant, variously described as pleasant to putrid and are visited by bumblebees and other long-tongued bees.”

Yesterday I spotted a flowering Mayapple plant as I was exploring the area surrounding a creek in Prince William County, Virginia. I have been seeing Mayapple plants for the last couple of weeks as I have been searching for dragonflies, but this is the first one that I have seen in bloom this spring. You have to get pretty low to the ground to spot the flowers, and it was a bit of a challenge getting this shot.

There is something whimsical about a flower that has its own dual umbrella to provide it with shade—I can’t help but smile whenever I spot a Mayapple in bloom.

Mayapple

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Mayapples in April

Posted in Flowers, Photography, spring, tagged , , , , , on April 29, 2022| 8 Comments »

Most flowers have blooms at the end of their stems or at least in places above their leaves. Each spring, though, I encounter Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum), a weird plant that seems to work in a totally different way. It puts out large umbrella-shaped leaves and eventually a single white blossom appears at the juncture point where the stem branches off in two directions. If you don’t know that the blooms are there, it is easy to miss them, because the large leaves hide them from view.

I saw a large number of Mayapples on Wednesday at Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge at the edge of Fort Belvoir, a nearby Army base where I have seen Mayapples in the past, but most often before or after they had flowered. I tried to capture the unique way that this plant grows in these photos, which was a bit of a challenge, because the blooms are so close to the ground.

I came across a fascinating article on the Wisconsin Horticulture website that noted that Mayapple  “typically grows in colonies from a single root in open deciduous forests and shady fields, riverbanks and roadsides…The upright stems grow from a shallow, creeping, branched underground rhizome, composed of many thick dark or reddish-brown tubers connected by fleshy fibers and downward spreading roots at the nodes. Each terminal bud produces a shoot. The mostly unbranched 12-18 inch tall stems are topped with umbrella-like (peltate) leaves. The leaves remain furled as the stem elongates in the spring, unfolding when the stem nears its full height. Each smooth, pale green, rounded, palmate leaf has 5-9 shallowly to deeply cut lobes. There are one or two leaves per stem, each up to a foot across. Only stems with more than one leaf will flower. Mayapple often forms large, dense colonies in the wild.”

As most of you know, I focus mostly on wildlife in my photography, but my almost insatiable sense of curiosity draws me to anything weird and wonderful that attracts my attention, like these Mayapples.

mayapple

Mayapple

Mayapple

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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