This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a pink and prolific poisonous weed found throughout our state, Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana).
Pokeweed is a robust herbaceous plant found in a wide range of habitats across the eastern United States. It’s most often encountered in sunny areas on the outskirts of forests and along field edges. The plant reaches four to five feet in height and nearly the same in width but can get far larger if growing conditions are right. Pokeweed’s stems are thick, smooth, and dyed a deep fuchsia across the whole of the plant. The leaves are large, elliptical shaped, and often drooping. Pokeweed blooms throughout summer and fall, producing piles of flower spikes wrapped in tiny, five-petalled creamy-pink flowers. The old flowers set fruit as the new flowers emerge until the spike reaches about four to eight inches long. The berries ripen from an olive green to a deep, inky black that attracts fruit eating birds. Songbird species like Mockingbirds, Cardinals, Catbirds, and Thrushes dine on the berries and spread the seeds during their daily lives.
All parts of the Pokeweed plant are poisonous to mammals, especially the roots, but birds are immune to the poison. However, young Pokeweed leaves and shoots are often eaten by folks in the Southeast in a dish called Poke Salad. New growth is harvested and then boiled and washed in fresh water several times to denature and draw out the toxic chemicals. Then the cooked greens are served like Spinach. The berries can also be used to create a pink dye, which does retain its toxic quality.
