Saturday, September 08, 2012


I suspect most people develop ambivalence towards pokeweed over time. With thick annual stems rising as much as eight feet up from perennial roots each year, pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) can become a striking specimen if given enough room, with flowers and berries that hang like elaborate jewelry from purplish stems. And yet its elegance tends to be ragged around the edges, and its admirable capacity to fill voids in the garden quickly segues into a realization that its many offspring are leaving no room for anything else to grow.

One approach to managing its exuberance is to dig out most of the volunteer pokeweeds each year, leaving one or two in an out of the way spot where they have enough room to reach their full size.
The berries are poisonous for people but not for birds, and were once used for dyeing clothing. The only current application of the berries as a dye that I'm aware of happens accidentally when a robin eats berries from one yard, then dive bombs the neighbor's laundry hung outdoors to dry. A land manager I know relishes telling this story, while asserting that the neighbor could easily avoid the consequences by putting her clothes out closer to midday, after the birds had already processed their early morning feast.

Here's an example, sent by a friend, of the berry's use in colonial days to dye uniforms the color of garnet.

"Check out this interesting use of pokeweed berries, at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia which was founded by the son-in-law of John Witherspoon:"

Sometime I'll find a photo of my daughter standing on the trunk of an ombu tree (Phytolacca dioica), a close relative of pokeweed that grows in the pampas of Argentina. It grows like a tree yet has no wood. The swollen base of the trunk provided gauchos with a shady spot to sit down and play guitar.


  1. Traditionally, some people have eaten only the tender young shoots of the poke plant (before any leaves take on their reddish hue), and only after boiling the "poke salad" for 20-30 minutes, first in salt water and then again in clean water. This produces a meal akin to cooked spinach, but is desirable only in spring the windows can stand open during cooking, as there is a strong aroma while boiling the toxins out.

  2. Back when we managed the sides of a paved bike/pedestrian pathway in Durham, NC for native wildflowers, I was surprised one spring day to encounter an older African American walking down the trail with an armful of pokeweed stems he had just harvested. I was glad to see them being put to use. Traditional use of vigorous plants like pokeweed and cattail may well have helped keep these plants in ecological balance with less aggressive plant species growing in the same habitat.

  3. To a low-income family in the South such as mine, poke "salad" was a plentiful and free food in spring and thus not to be ignored. We also ate squirrels, rabbits, and deer--likewise quite plentiful--and the occasional bullfrog or o'possum (only very seldom). We also are and preserved other wild-harvested foods including blackberries, raspberries, plums, and muskedines. I even remember helping my mother make buttermilk once or twice (with a churn, no less).