Botanical atlas
Putty Root
Aplectrum hyemale
This plant is kept in the atlas for identification and safety, not for use. Read the safety notes below before handling it, and keep it away from children, cats, and food.
Long before glue came in a bottle, early Appalachian and Midwestern households prized putty root for the sticky, mucilaginous sap inside its corm, which was pressed into service to mend cracked crockery and broken china, giving the plant its common name. Its underground growth habit, one older rounded corm attached by a short rhizome to a newer one, was seen as a pair standing together, and folk tradition in the Ozarks and Appalachians came to call the two joined corms Adam and Eve, carried together in a small bag as a charm meant to keep a couple bonded in love. The plant itself is a quiet oddity of the forest floor, sending up a single pleated, dark green leaf in autumn that stays green through the coldest months (hyemale means of winter), then withers away just as the leafless flower stalk rises in its place come spring. It has never been a kitchen or medicine-chest herb in the way many woodland plants are, its value was always practical and symbolic rather than curative.
Safety.
No reliable safety data exists for internal use, so it should not be taken by mouth. It's also an uncommon woodland orchid that rarely recovers once dug, so leave it undisturbed in the wild.
Our sister app HerbLens identifies putty root from a photo and keeps its full botanical portrait: growing guide, harvest notes, and look-alike warnings.
View on HerbLensHerbSense shares traditional herbal knowledge for education, not diagnosis or treatment. Herbs can interact with medicines and conditions. Speak with your doctor before acting on anything here, and seek care promptly for anything severe, sudden, or worsening.