Erect perennial herbs, with horizontal poisonous rootstocks, large peltate palmately lobed leaves, and solitary white flowers. Sepals 6, petaloid, fugacious, the bud with 3 fugacious bractlets. Petals 6-9, flat, obovate, longer than the sepals. Stamens as many or twice as many as the petals; anthers linear, longitudinally dehiscent. Pistil 1 (rarely several); ovary ovoid, many-ovuled, forming a large fleshy berry in fruit. Seeds numerous, obovate, enclosed in fleshy arils. [Greek, Anapodophyllum, duck-foot-leaf.]

A genus of about 4 species, the following typical one native of eastern North America and Japan, the others Asiatic.

1. Podophyllum Peltàtum L. May Apple. Wild Mandrake

Fig. 1961

Podophyllum peltatum L. Sp. Pl 505. 1753.

Erect, 1°-1 1/2° high. Basal leaves centrally peltate, nearly 1° in diameter, long-petioled, deeply 5-9-lobed, glabrous, or pubescent and light green on the lower surface, darker above; lobes 2-cleft and dentate at the apex; flowering stems appearing from different rootstocks, bearing 1-3 similar leaves, or occasionally leafless; flower white, stout-peduncled, nodding, 2 broad, appearing from the base of the upper leaf and generally from immediately between the two leaves; stamens twice as many as the petals; fruit ovoid, yellowish, 2' long, edible.

In low woods, western Quebec and throughout southern Ontario to Minnesota, Kansas, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Ascends to 2500 ft. in Virginia. Indian- or hog-apple. Devil's-apples. Wild-or ground-lemon. Puck's-foot. Raccoon-berry. May.