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Reference

Compendium

Ingredients for spellwork: their formal and folk names, categories, deities and forms, with the sources behind them.

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    313 ingredients

    313 ingredients

    NewCaution
    Botanical Name
    Podophyllum peltatum

    Mayapple

    Mayapple is a herbaceous perennial of the barberry family from the woodlands of the eastern United States and south-eastern Canada, where it grows in colonies that spread from a single creeping rootstock. Its stems stand thirty to forty centimetres tall, each under one umbrella-like, deeply lobed leaf, or a pair on a flowering stem, and a white flower grows in the fork, usually hidden by the leaves. In some places it is the flower that appears in early May, while the egg-shaped yellow fruit, which looks like a small lemon, ripens later in the summer. All parts of the plant are poisonous, though the ripe fruit can be eaten in small amounts and is sometimes made into jelly. Indigenous Americans used it as an emetic, a purge and a remedy for worms, and two of its derivatives have shown promise against some cancers; one of them, etoposide, is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. Despite its name of American mandrake, it is no relation of the true mandrake, and Kynes traces the confusion to both plants being used as purgatives in England. Appalachian lore told of male and female plants, and the Delaware used it as a love charm. Cunningham treats it as a stand-in for European mandrake, with practically the same uses.

    Caution

    Poisonous. AHPA places it in safety class 3: not to be used except under the supervision of an expert qualified in its use. Poisoning has followed both swallowing it and putting it on the skin, with nausea, vomiting, nerve damage in the limbs, difficulty breathing, lethargy and coma, and some cases have been fatal. It acts as an abortifacient, an emetic and a stimulant laxative; putting its compounds podophyllin and podophyllotoxin on the skin in pregnancy is strongly contraindicated, and its safety while nursing has not been established. Cunningham marks it Poison, never to be taken internally or put on the skin, and Kynes warns that the unripe fruit and other parts are toxic and can be fatal if eaten.

    The Fruit and Root forms carry their own cautions; the ingredient's page shows them.

    Forms

    • Fruit
    • Root

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Fire
    Celestial Bodies
    Mercury

    Folk Names

    • American Mandrake
    • Devil’s Apple
    • Duck Foot Leaf
    • Duck’s Foot
    • Ground Lemon
    • Hog Apple
    • Mandrake
    • Raccoon Berry
    • Wild Lemon
    • Wild Mandrake

    Categories

    • Love
    • Prosperity
    • Protection
    See in Compendium