# Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) *May-apple, American mandrake, Indian apple, hog apple, wild lemon, duck’s foot, wild jalap, raccoon-berry; *Podophyllum peltatum* of Linnaeus, *Anapodophyllum canadense* of Catesby; the source of podophyllin and podophyllotoxin* **Known today as.** *Podophyllum peltatum*, a herb of low shady ground and damp open woods that spreads by its creeping root into beds: a single stem a foot high, forking into two umbrella-like peltate leaves with one nodding white flower in the fork, followed by a large yellow egg-shaped fruit. It flowers in May and fruits in August, from New England to Georgia and throughout the interior. Kind: Plant Deadly: yes > **Deadly.** The root and resin are drastic purgatives and in overdose have killed; the resin applied to warts has caused coma and lasting nerve damage. The leaves and the spring shoots are poisonous and have been fatal as a potherb. Only the fully ripe yellow fruit is eaten, and that has purged the susceptible. ## What was it used for? Bigelow ranked the root among the surest and most active of native cathartics, answering the purposes of jalap, aloes, and rhubarb, twenty grains of the fine powder being commonly enough, and he had it from Professor Barton that the leaves were poisonous and the whole plant somewhat narcotic; the Shakers of Lebanon prepared an esteemed extract. Millspaugh calls it “one of the principal remedies used by the American aborigines,” valued for its cathartic action, and names the resin podophyllin, first used by Professor John King in 1835, that went into the cathartic pills of a century. The ripe fruit, Bigelow’s “wild lemons,” was eaten with impunity, though Millspaugh saw catharsis follow indulgence in it and knew of fatal results from the spring foliage taken as a potherb. In Britain it entered the Pharmacopoeia in 1864. ## What does modern science say? Podophyllotoxin, the crystalline principle, is the parent of the topoisomerase inhibitors used against cancer, and the resin is still applied to genital warts; both are poisons. In 1979 a young woman treated for warts with three to eight millilitres of the resin returned in a coma twenty hours later with the marrow, the liver, and the nervous system all injured, and six months afterward still had neurological sequelae; in 1982 a man who swallowed ten grams of podophyllum showed no symptoms for ten hours and then lost his reflexes, fell into coma with a marked lactic acidosis, and died at thirty-nine hours despite haemoperfusion. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **podophyllotoxin**: the crystalline purgative principle of the root and resin; the parent of the semisynthetic topoisomerase inhibitors - **podophyllin**: the resin precipitated from the alcoholic extract, Professor King’s preparation of 1835; about eighty-four pounds to the ton of root, by Millspaugh - **picropodophyllin and podophylloquercetin**: Podwissotzki’s fractions of the resin, the latter blamed for the griping **Mechanism.** A drastic irritant purgative on the bowel and, systemically, a poison of dividing cells and of the nervous system: in the two reported cases the marrow, the liver, and the brain were injured, one patient dying in coma with lactic acidosis thirty-nine hours after ten grams by mouth, another surviving a topical overdose with lasting neurological damage. **Dose.** Twenty grains of the powdered root, by Bigelow, as a cathartic; the resin was applied to warts and taken in cathartic pills. Ten grams by mouth was fatal. **Standing.** A historical purgative whose principle became a chemotherapy precursor and a wart paint; the plant itself is a poison in every part but the ripe fruit. ## What lore surrounds it? The American mandrake is no mandrake: Millspaugh is at pains to say the true one is *Atropa mandragora* of southern Europe, and the Greek name *Podophyllum*, foot-leaf, comes from a fancied likeness of the leaf to the webbed foot of a water bird, whence duck’s foot. Bigelow, who never saw it farther north on the coast than Boston, found it always in beds, and used its root as the text for a lesson in when to dig roots at all: in the cold season, when the sap is down, though the savages and ignorant persons who gathered ginseng and snakeroot for export took them when the tops were easiest to see. ## What did the older authorities say? **Jacob Bigelow.** “We have hardly any native plant which answers better the common purposes of jalap, aloes and rhubarb, and which is more safe and mild in its operation.” The root should be given in substance in fine powder, twenty grains; it is dug in the cold season, autumn and winter, when the virtue of perennials is gathered in the root, though he doubted the difference was as great as commonly supposed. The fruit “is acid and agreeable to the taste of many persons. It is sometimes called wild lemons, and is eaten with impunity.” **Charles F. Millspaugh.** The apples when fully ripe “are gathered, especially by children, who seem to relish their sweet, mawkish taste,” and are sold in markets, “though catharsis often follows indulgence in them, and, to susceptible persons, it is often quite severe.” The odour of the flowers is nauseous. “The foliage and stems, when appearing in spring, have been used for a potherb, and in some cases with fatal results.” Podophyllin is prepared by exhausting the root with alcohol and pouring the syrupy percolate into cold water; the yield is about eighty-four pounds to the ton, highest in April. **Mrs. M. Grieve.** The American Mandrake: “a medicine of most extensive service; its greatest power lies in its action upon the liver and bowels.” In large doses it produces nausea and vomiting, “and even inflammation of the stomach and intestines, which has been known to prove fatal.” The leaves and roots are poisonous; the fruit is edible, sweet though slightly acid. The drug was well known to the North American Indians as an emetic and vermifuge. ## Sources - Bigelow, J. (1818). *American Medical Botany*, vol. 2, “Podophyllum peltatum. May Apple,” pp. 34–40 and Plate XXII. Internet Archive, mobot31753000788221. - Millspaugh, C. F. (1887). *American Medicinal Plants*, vol. 1, no. 17, “Podophyllum peltatum,” and Plate 17. Internet Archive, americanmedicina01mill_0. - Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Mandrake, American.” As published on botanical.com. - Cassidy, D. E., Drewry, J., & Fanning, J. P. (1982). Podophyllum toxicity: a report of a fatal case and a review of the literature. *Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology* 19: 35–44. doi:10.3109/15563658208990364 - Moher, L. M., & Maurer, S. A. (1979). Podophyllum toxicity: case report and literature review. *Journal of Family Practice* 9: 237–240. --- *Mayapple.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/mayapple Historical description, not medical advice.