May Apple

She use to bile down the roots from may-apple, snake root and blood root, and make her medicine. ❋ Work Projects Administration (N/A)

_Berberideæ_, which also includes the curious mandrake or may-apple ❋ Douglas Houghton Campbell (N/A)

The fruit of the barberry and may-apple are edible, but the root of the latter is poisonous. ❋ Douglas Houghton Campbell (N/A)

Every county has its Theocritus who sings the nearest creek, the bloom of the may-apple, the squirrel on the stake-and-rider fence, the rabbit in the corn, the paw-paw thicket where fruit for the gods lures farm boys on frosty mornings in golden autumn. ❋ Meredith Nicholson (1906)

Whatever it may be that I find, pawpaw or may-apple or spray of willow, if you do not want it, throw it over the edge of the hill, without ado, to the birds or squirrels or kine, and do not include it in your controversial discourse. ❋ Vachel Lindsay (1905)

There was the Canada plum (_Prunus americana_), the wild black cherry (_Prunus serotina_), the red cherries (_P. pennsylvanica_), the choke cherry (_P. virginiana_), wild apples (_Pyrus coronaria_), wild pears (a small berry-like pear called "poire" by the French: _Pyrus canadensis_), and the may-apple ❋ Harry Hamilton Johnston (1892)

If this treatment should not allay the fever and reduce the swelling in a few days, apply a poultice of polk-root and may-apple root, boiled to a strong decoction, thickened and applied as above; this last poultice is to draw out any offensive matter that may be lurking at the bone, and must be continued until the inflammation subsides -- after the fever a bates, the black-oak poultice may be re-applied during the whole time, the wound must be regularly washed, bathed and anointed as above directed, every twelve hours. ❋ Richard Foreman (1849)

"I want to go back yonder in my life where the hills meet the sky in a purple haze, where you feel yourself growing with the trees, where the smell of new earth calls you to the woods, where the dogwood is budding and the may-apple peeps up through last year's leaves at the new leaves budding out on the grand old maples above. ❋ Ben W. [Illustrator] Warden (N/A)

Champlain describes this may-apple as of the form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only two fruits on each plant.] ❋ Harry Hamilton Johnston (1892)