It was a beautiful autumn day. The walnuts had turned yellow, and the maples sported orange and red. The elms were still green, and several plants with berries were inviting the birds to feast in the ditch. It was a perfect morning for a walk with the dogs, so we headed out with Dave, my Seeing Eye dog, and Clancy, the ten-month-old golden retriever.
We stopped along the road and climbed down into the ditch to inspect a pokeweed that was laden with beautiful clusters of dark purple berries. Beautiful and poisonous. Clancy, who will eat anything, started chowing down on one cluster while I inspected another one. Whoa!! No poke berries for dogs. They are poisonous to dogs and people alike. How have we survived so long without getting poisoned by the plants right here on Owl Acres? Clancy only got a few of the berries. We watched for symptoms of poisoning, but he didn’t have any ill-effects—this time. Pfew! Another bullet dodged! And he’s not a cat with nine lives, so I’m not sure how many times he can pull this off!
The pokeweed plant I was inspecting was as tall as I am. Its branches were weighed down by heavy clusters of shiny purple berries. The long narrow leaves were still green while some of its neighbors had already dried into their fall tan colors. The pokeweed’s branches were mostly red.
Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is native to North America and is found from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Rockies. It is a perennial plant. It spreads by seeds, but also develops a thick and sturdy taproot that it grows back from each spring. And every part of it is poisonous to most mammals if they get very much of it.
Pokeweed gets its English name from a corruption of an Algonquian word variously spelled “pookan” “puccoon” “pocan” or “poughkone”. The term means bloody and may refer to the red dyes made from the roots and berries. It is also variously known as poke salad, poke sallett, poke berry, dragon berry, and ink berry.
Early settlers and native Americans used the root of the pokeweed in poultices to combat rheumatism and some skin conditions. They also used the root and berries to make red dyes for baskets.
Nineteenth-century Americans used poke berries for a variety of supposed cures and patent medicines. It was thought to be effective as a dietary supplement for arthritis, mumps and skin conditions. In the 1890s it was touted for weight loss. Since it makes you terribly sick and vomiting if you eat the berries, I imagine it would be pretty effective for weight loss if it didn’t kill you. They also used the juice of the berries to color wine.
The most well-known use though is as boiled greens. In the spring, while the tender shoots are all green, they can be picked and prepared for eating. Once any red appears on the stems, they should not be eaten at all. The red color alerts you to the poison. To prepare the green shoots to eat they have to be boiled, rinsed and boiled again several times to get rid of the poison. Only then can poke salad be handled like similar foods such as collard greens. And like collard greens, poke salad is traditionally a southern food. Canned poke salad was available commercially for several years in the 1990s but has been withdrawn. Several southern towns host poke salad festivals, honoring this traditional green.
Although they’re poisonous to humans, the lush ripe poke berries provide a rich banquet for birds. Cedar waxwings, cardinals, catbirds, mockingbirds, brown thrashers, mourning doves and other songbirds feast on them and spread the seeds. Eaten in small quantities they seem to be tolerated by deer, foxes, raccoons and opossums. The key here is probably “small quantities.”
Pokeweed is one of a variety of host plants for the caterpillars of the giant leopard moth (Hypercompe scribonia). Like the woolly-bear caterpillars of the Isabella tiger moth, these caterpillars have spikey black hairs all over them, so they are sometimes called woolly-bears as well. They also have red rings around their bodies, and will curl up when touched. The adult version of the giant leopard moth is much larger than most moths. It has white wings with black rings and spots like a leopard. Its body is iridescent blue-black with reddish-orange bands and stripes. When captured, the moth will exude a foul-smelling liquid to discourage predators from eating it. Like most moths, the adult giant leopard moth is nocturnal, so you won’t see them very often, except possibly in your bug zapper.
Pokeweed is also host to pollinators including bees and ruby-throated hummingbirds. By the end of June it will be in full bloom with clusters of small, pinkish flowers, inviting the bees and hummingbirds to sip its nectar. By July it will be taller than I am, and its stalk and stems and the veins of the leaves will be definitely red, advertising the poisons within. And in October, those lovely clusters of dark purple berries will be tempting Clancy and the birds. We’ll let the birds have them and keep Clancy out of the ditch.
Photo by Author. Alt text: Dark purple berries of pokeweed hang in an inviting drupe from a plant in the ditch next to Owl Acres.
2 comments
Remember the song “Polk Salad Annie?” It’s a 1968 song written and performed by Tony Joe White. Its lyrics describe the lifestyle of a poor rural Southern girl and her family. Traditionally, the term to describe the type of food highlighted in the song is polk or poke salad, a cooked greens dish made from pokeweed. Its 1969 single release peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Thanks, Wikipedia, and especially you, Karen. – Joe
I remember the song, but I had no idea what poke salad was. My mother used to gather what she called pigweed and cook them as greens. I think it might have been lambs quarters though, not poke salad.