Bad Sci Fi

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Last night while flipping thru the channels I was stopped by the intriguing title "Mandrake". Expecting some malcontent serial killer hermit that knew the woods well enough to poison his victims with plants I eagerly changed the channel. Instead Mandrake turned out to be some twisting turning vine that grabbed and penetrated people in places that would make Larry Flint blush. After a couple too many minutes of that, (another ten minutes of my life wasted that I'll never get back)I turned off the TV and looked up mandrake (mayapple is the more common name) in that great book, Edible Wild Plants by Elias and Dykeman, a now beat up and ragged little book, made that way from being thrown in my backpack on too many springtime walks. In typical clinical fashion the book states: "leaves and particularly the roots contain a resinous compound known as podophyllin that can cause violent cathartic reactions. Consumption of small quantities will produce severe gastric upset and vomiting. Death mat occur from larger quantities." Mayapple or mandrake is only in the book because the fruit, when ripe and yellow in summer, is edible, though when green the fruit like the rest of mayapple is poisonous. I've tried a bit of the fruit and must say it's not exactly like eating strawberries. The old timers called this aptly the "devil's apple".
What the book does fail to reveal is the great lore behind the plant, Indians used the plant in a variety of ways including ingesting large amounts as a suicide potion, though considering the above quote about "severe gastric upset" I could hardly recommend it as a peaceful way to go. Supposedly the Penobscot Indians used mayapple to cure warts and the Cherokee used a watered down potion of it to cure worms which does seem quite feasible. The roots were also used, crushed and added to water I'd imagine, by Indians as an insecticide on crops. Around 1820 a cream made from Mayapple was touted as a cure for venereal warts, something to keep in mind if your just too embarrassed to go to the doctor I guess. Mayapple was used as an ingredient for preparing laxatives and sold over the counter as a medicine known as ‘Carter’s Little Liver Pills”. I remember finding one of the old hand blown bottles embossed with Carter’s Little Liver Pills and a spiel on it's effectiveness in an old dump just upriver from the King's Powder Plant as a kid, I hear that bottle is worth quite a bit of money now, I wonder where it went? Mayapple or Mandrakes real claim to fame in the future may be as a treatment for cancer, already the plant is being used as a treatment for testicular cancer after chemotherapy has failed. Research is being conducted testing the plants use in treating a bunch of things from cancer to tumors and polyps to herpes.
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Wild Mandrake or Mayapple spreads readily from it's rhizomes or roots and the one plant I brought home because it's such a pretty landscape plant has now formed a small colony in the shade of the backyard swing. In early summer patches of the umbrella-like leaves are a fixture in the woods here along the Little Miami, while in the fall the dying leaves turn bit by bit trying not to give up the ghost and sometimes take on a lovely though bittersweet aspect not unlike fall itself.
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