May 10: Mayapple and Spiderwort: Flowers that hide

The two flowers in this blog can be hard to spot unless you know when and where to look.

The first is the Mayapple, which is also called Adams Apple, Mandrake Root (a la Harry Potter!), American Mandrake, Raccoon Berry, Wild Lemon, Indian Apple, Duck's Foot, Hog Apple, Umbrella Plant, and Ground Lemon. Wow, that's a lot of names!

Mayapple

I nearly missed seeing this flower, because as you can see it hides underneath the leaves of the plant, which are only about 6 inches off the ground. So it's very easy to just walk on by and not notice the flowers. The plant does produce an apple of sorts, although not until August. The fruit is edible in moderate amounts, but poisonous if you eat too much. The rest of the plant is poisonous too. It's used for a variety of medicinal purposes, such as getting rid of warts and curing the petrification of people who look indirectly into the eyes of a basilisk.

Spiderwort does not sound like an attractive name, but the plant is one of the most beautiful I've seen yet.

Spiderwort

The funny thing is, I noticed this plant in my backyard and came back later in the day to take pictures, only to notice that all the blooms were gone! But my neighbor told me that the plant only blooms in the morning. So sure enough, I came back the next morning and the blooms were there again.

Each bloom only lasts one day. I didn't notice any fallen petals, but when the flowers close, an enzyme in the flower causes it to quickly decompose into a slimy gel. Because of this, the plant is also called Widow's Tears, Job's Tears, and Cow Slobber. :-D Honeybees like this plant.

You can eat the flowers and plants raw as a salad or add them to stews, though you want to pick the flowers before they turn into goo. The sap is very thick and you can pull it out of the stem in a filament and make webs of it -- this is probably why it's called Spiderwort, though turning the flower into goo also is spidery behavior. A blue paint can be made from the flowers, that Native Americans used to use to decorate moccasins.

This plant is useful for detecting radiation leaks at nuclear power plants. If there is leakage, the flowers turn pink. I wonder how someone discovered that!