Ripe pokeweed berries are juicy and attractive, but do not eat them. All parts of pokeweed should be considered toxic.
Wendy VanDyk Evans, Bugwood.org
Pokeweed
Phytolacca americana
Poisonous
Skin irritating
Other Common Name:
Poke; Poke Salat
Family:
Phytolaccaceae (pokeweeds)
Description:
Pokeweed is a tall, smooth, branching perennial with red stems and juicy, dark purple berries. Stems smooth, often reddish- or purplish-tinged. Flowers in terminal and lateral racemes, minute, somewhat bell-shaped, with 5 greenish-white sepals suffused with pink. There are no petals, 10 protruding stamens, and 1 pistil with 10 carpels (chambers) in a ring, each carpel having its own style. Blooms May–October. Leaves many, alternate, smooth, oblong-lanceolate, to 1 foot long, on petioles. Fruit elongated clusters dark purple, juicy berries containing 10 oval black seeds.
Size:
Height: to 10 feet.
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Pokeweed Plant
Pokeweed is a weedy perennial common in disturbed soils and waste places, including, farmyards, fencerows, fields, and rights-of-way.
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Pokeweed Stems and Foliage
The smooth, sturdy, erect reddish or purplish stems of pokeweed make it an attractive and memorable plant.
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Young Pokeweed Plant
If you want to eat pokeweed, use only very young plants, and make sure you understand how to cook them correctly.
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Pokeweed Flowers
If you look closely at these pokeweed flowers, you can see the green pistil in the center of the flower, which will become the berry.
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Pokeweed (Mature Berry)
Each pokeweed berry is an enlarged pistil or ovary that is made up of 8–10 (usually 10) carpels (a type of seed chamber), each with its own seed.
Habitat and conservation:
Common in disturbed soils and waste places, farmyards, fencerows, fields, and rights-of-way, and banks of waterways, ponds, lakes, bases and ledges of bluffs, and edges of bottomland and moist upland forests. Its handsome smooth, purple-tinged stems, stout taproot, and long-lasting fertility of the seeds make this a familiar, hardy weed. It is native to the eastern United States but has been introduced west to California and Oregon and to the Old World.
Distribution in Missouri:
Statewide.
Status:
The toxins in pokeweed are not completely understood. All parts should be considered poisonous to people and livestock. Cooking reduces the toxicity. Some people develop a rash after handling the plants. This is the only member of the pokeweed family in Missouri. Botanists, using gene sequencing data, are debating how big the pokeweed family is. It could contain between 30 and 120 species worldwide. Regardless, most pokeweed species live in tropical and subtropical regions of the New World.
Human connections:
All parts are toxic, but young shoots and leaves, after thorough cooking in at least 2 waters, are eaten by many in a dish traditionally called poke salat. This this plant is both toxic and edible. The berries have been used for food coloring, ink, and dye. Scientists are studying the plant for possible antiviral and antitumor medicine.
Ecosystem connections:
The berries are eaten by birds, which seem to be immune to the toxins in the fruits, and other animals. Birds disperse the seeds, which can survive in the soil for more than 40 years. Pokeweed is an aggressive and efficient colonizer of disturbed sites.
About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri
A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!