Temperate Fruit & Orchards > Temperate Fruit Discussion

Let's Domesticate the Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum)

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Professor Porcupine:
@gardenGnostic Thank you! Maybe I can make a YouTube Channel with that name ;)?

No Mayapples grow wild in Pacific Norwest Region yet, but that's only because few people grow them. Pacific Northwest is the Perfect climate for them to grow in. Mayapples love to grow undertrees with consistent moisture, they fruit well in more sunnier areas of a forrest.

If you want seeds of the American Mayapple, I'll gladly trade you some just PM me.

@drymifolia This is EPIC! That's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping they did. I wish a lot more of this info was documented, so we could learn from them. It could help explain why some populations have larger fruits or why some Orange & Red fruited forms exist. Makes me wonder why Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) fruits are so big? Could the wild forms actually be surviving dependents of cultivated/domesticated plants? Is Asimina parviflora actually the true wild species & Asinima triloba semi-wild? It would make sense for some cultivated/semi-wild forms to survive being perennial so I don't think it's far fetched to assume the same thing could've happen with Mayapples.
Pawpaw has such a huge "Native" range but makes me really think that Native Americans spread it's range far & wide like their own flavor of Johnny Apple Seed but for Pawpaw. After all why can't plants form a symbiosis with Humans? Wide-spread distribution may also explain why there's so much variety in flavor, Each eco-region where they grew selected for different traits. American Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) is also very widespread but Appalachian Blue Mayapple (Podophyllum cymosum) mostly confined to the southern Appalachian Region, maybe Podophyllum cymosum wasn't involved in cultivation like Podophyllum peltatum was.

Lots of crops in the EAC (Eastern Agricultural Complex) have been lost, reverting back to their old forms. It just happens that most EAC crops are annuals, but such reversion to wild forms would be less in perennials right? Surely Native Americans Cultivated Mayapples, American Passionfruit, Pawpaw, Giant Solomon Seals, ect too right? I'm just thinking they had to have some perennials in the EAC too (Technically Sunroot is one of them & perennial)!

drymifolia:
Absolutely yes, pawpaw was domesticated. I don't think the entire species is the domesticated form of some other species, but there are large groves of better-quality fruit near known Indigenous settlements, and plenty of evidence that the distribution of the species is at least partially due to human influence. I am positive I've read about this in some pawpaw books, and there's lots of information about this available, e.g.:

https://apalacheresearch.com/2021/06/24/the-indigenous-agriculture-of-the-americas-pawpaw-fruit/

Professor Porcupine:
Are you saying Asimina triloba is a species complex with many subspecies that Native Americans Introgressed so thoroughly that they became one species? That's what happend with Cucurbita pepo & Cucurbita texana, same thing with the Cucumis melo complex which consists of many subspecies (Explains why Cucumis melo has so much diveristy if many species made up it's genetics).

I'm thinking of bring all the Mayapple species together & introgress throughly so they all become a 1 species hybrid swarm. If our Human ancestors did it before why can't we do it again (Especially if left over or abandoned semi-domesticated forms of Mayapples still exist for me to continue the domestication work with)?

BloomAndSprout:
I live in a forest and have been looking for something that would grow under shade. I'll definitely consider growing these.

Francis_Eric:
You should put Chicken Wire around the Plants Possums will get them

I ate one of these Taste like Citrus in a way .

There was a Now sold Nursery in Oregon  that hybridized these
with Chinese ones to make the leaves pooka dotted
I have the Link you need to activate it on internet archive
(or way back machine) but I got to look for it in emails --it's over 15 years old.)_

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