This is why it's called mayapple

I took this photo at the edge of a wood lot on May 24. The mayapple plant is one of the earliest native woodland wildflowers to appear in springtime. It grows quickly to a height of from about a foot to maybe 20 inches tall. A mayapple with only a single umbrella-like leaf will not bloom or produce a fruit.

When the plant grows a stem and two leaves, it can make a white flower at the top of the stem where the leaves join. If conditions are right, when the flower falls away a small "apple" will replace the flower. By mid summer the whole plant will wither away and fall unnoticed to the forest floor.

Other names for the mayapple include American mandrake, umbrella plant and duck's foot. This plant is considered poisonous. The mayapple colonizes an area from a single rhizome and a massive root system.