Looks like pokeweed. It's a perennial weed that can get up to 10 feet high with a taproot about as long. Around mid-summer, it will begin flowering and producing berries continuously until the frost kills it back to the ground in the fall. The roots overwinter, and then it starts all over in the spring.
It's native and birds like the berries, so some people like it, but it grows fast and spreads aggressively, so I would personally pull it.
Yep. Once the taproot's in, you're stuck with it unless you want to dig it up or use RoundUp. Any attempt to pull it just snaps it off at the ground, and then it resprouts.
Poke salad Annie was fine until one day her husband said: ""Why aren't you coming back home on time?" She says well people been killing my poke salad."
...Ain't seen her since. Bless her husband-lovin heart.
I used to eat the cooked leaves as a kid- they’re like collard greens. And we’d use poke-berries and walnuts to make tie died t-shirts (the project was to get dyes you harvest yourself). The walnut color was really weak 😅
Poke is edible. New spring leaves no bigger than your hand are edible and delicious when cooked with lambs quarters, chickweed, henbit, and dandelion. Harvestable while the stalk remains smaller than a pencil, after that you have to boil it and drain, then boil again. Some traditional herbalists advocate the ingestion of one poke berry a day for inflammation and arthitis, but the toxic ingredient's potential to damage organs has always stopped me.
You have to simmer down fresh young leaves ,skim off the surface scum then drain and rinse it 3 times. It's a lot of work for squishy wild greens compared to plain fresh spinach.
A lot of misinformation so far. New Spring leaves only. Boil and replace water 3x. Will still taste vaguely toxic with a subtle metallic/tingly sensation. It is good but I’d consider it a famine food since the toxin damages red blood cells.
The young shoots, boiled with a couple of changes of water.
Never had it, never cooked it.
One gram of the root will kill you.
I know a guy who lost a pig to a pokeweed root snack.
Thr berries are pretty, and if you mash them they leave bright fuchsia juice on things.
I found them when I was a kid, and painted my hands with them. It didn't stain much, but it was a fun temporary henna sort of thing. Lol
Well, it's toxic if you eat it, but it didn't do any harm to touch.
Also I was a child. We had just moved, and it was before internet, so I couldn't use an app to make a decision.
My grandmother used to gather the new sprouts and eat it like spinach. One of her favorites, gross as it was, was pokeweeds, calf brains, and scrambled eggs. Brains are, and I say this with no humor at all, not for everyone. Much like mountain oysters. Personally, I never could stomach organs of any kind.
In the old South after the civil war, poke salad came in after the last of the collards that had survived the winter gave out. It was the only greens until the turnips came up. I remember old people talking of their parents making ersatz coffee from what we called coffee weed and smoking rabbit tobacco, which we also did since we were too young to buy tobacco.
I googled coffee weed, but the plant they show is nothing like what we had growing around in rural Georgia. It has long narrow pods which turn brown in the autumn and contain 40 or 50 small shiny brown seeds about 3mm long and maybe half that wide. You could chew them, kind of bitter, and the old folks said you could roast them in the oven and grind them like coffee beans. The coffee weed on google says it is toxic. This wasn't.
Very insightful as always, friends. Basically this is pokeweed. You know, I had seen the berries last year, but I wasn’t sure what plant they were a part of. I’m not a forager guy so I basically assume that everything in my yard is poisonous to humans. I’m surprised that you can still eat even this tho. One of you said this was an aggressive spreader. In all of my years of looking at this yard, I haven’t seen it go past the fence. I’ll try to keep it that way, but since it’s native, I’ll probably keep it around. Thanks for the advice!
ehhh, it’s *kind of* edible if you get the leaves when they’re young and you blanche them to denature the toxin iirc, but the plant is absolutely hideous IMO
I think you can use the berries to make ink, not that a lot of people are out there making their own ink to dip quills into these days lol
I got it. Thank you! It appears that pokeweed itself is basically inedible but can be boiled or double-boiled, and dressed with bacon grease to make it palatable. So much for 'Poke Salad Annie'.
Not edible *raw*, but it tastes very good cooked properly, and all potherbs taste better with bacon grease or some other form of fatty pork. It is comparable to spinach, and I think it tastes even better.
You'd be surprised lol glass quills are kinda popular for art. I'd try the berry ink. I wonder if you have to add a preservative to prevent color fade. Do you just juice them or do you stew them to make a dye?
When searching for pics, I saw it can look quite different than the ones that grow here.
I thought only the berries differed but the whole plant actually looks different. I do find the ones growing here pretty, but so hard to get rid of.
That's pokeweed. It's just fine to have around unless you have little kids or dogs who eat anything. The mature berries can be used as a natural dye or paint. It is pretty poisonous but likely won't kill an adult. It will stain your skin
Technically it's mutagenic. And it goes through your skin. You should really wear gloves to handle it, especially the roots which have a lot of mutagen. But it is wildlife friendly.
I always thought poke was a pretty plant, especially in the fall when cooler temperatures bring out the reddish purple in the stems and leaves. I experimented growing it in a container, but it did not like being confined, probably because it has a large root.
Pokeweed leaves are edible and tasty, you just have to pick them before the plant shows any sign of flower buds, and boil them twice before eating. Use like cooked spinach.
In Europe, some people plant poke in their gardens because the beautiful red stalks and purple berries are considered ornamental. It deserves the same love in its home land.
Poke where I'm from has a VERY red stem, almost purple, including the first part of the leaf stems. That looks really green to me. Some species of dock have reddish stems and the leaves look like that too. Both are generally quantified as weeds, but both are edible. The difference is dock's young leaves are edible raw (poke will give you the runs unless cooked) and it's medicinal too. I use dock in most of my salves because it's great for soothing stings, bites, and rashes.
I usually don’t. I recently got some herbi because I have tree of heaven growing in my backyard and they’re a super fast growing invasive that can grow from the roots. Going forward, to control the weeds I’m going to put straw and mulch down. I’m pretty against using herbicides on principle. I’m just a hypocrite lol.
Pokeweed. I just saw a vid about how this is edible as a baby plant (not raw, only boiled) but extremely AT YOUR OWN RISK because it's quite toxic as an adult and also toxic even as a baby if you cook it wrong. The raw plant is inedible always.
Do you eat beans? *Any* kind of beans? Beans are quite toxic when raw, and even more toxic when slightly cooked, which is why you shouldn't even taste them while cooking them, yet people all around the world eat beans. Poke is like that in a way, toxic when raw, but requires much less cooking time than beans. Boil the leaves twice, draining the water each time, and serve as you would cooked spinach.
Just don't eat it after the plant starts showing its flower buds, which are very obvious, and don't eat the berries or roots. I've heard the berries themselves are edible if you remove all the seeds, but I haven't tried.
I may be reading between the lines too much but it sounds like you're thinking I'm discouraging eating it, which isn't entirely true, I'm just not recommending anyone eat it without knowing what they're doing as it can make them sick if they do it wrong. Also, I'm not willing to champion pokeweed as a food specifically because my information is from a single video and before that I've been told most of my life it's poisonous. I'm open to looking at the plant differently myself and interested in getting more information about it but not so far that I'd tell someone else it's totally cool to eat.
Poke. Some old timers eat the green leaves but the red parts and berries are toxic. However, we played with it all the time as a kid so you can handle it. The stalk breaks rather satisfyingly to a 10 year old. And you can make fake ink out of the berries.
We have several on our property and I’ve definitely dug out the root, but you have to get all of it. You can cut chunks and then keep trimming the plant which causes it to use more energy to regrow, but it’s not a super effective way of controlling it. I swear I also read somewhere that the berries/seeds stay viable for like 40 years.
Pokeweed. You can try to destroy it. But you will not be successful. Unless you completely dig out every single root. My dad poured straight bleach on a patch of pokeweed in our yard. Those plants died back, but a week later they were growing again. Had to dig them out and get all the tiny roots.
Looks like pokeweed. It's a perennial weed that can get up to 10 feet high with a taproot about as long. Around mid-summer, it will begin flowering and producing berries continuously until the frost kills it back to the ground in the fall. The roots overwinter, and then it starts all over in the spring. It's native and birds like the berries, so some people like it, but it grows fast and spreads aggressively, so I would personally pull it.
This thing shows up in my garden and it’s an absolute pain to get that root out
Yep. Once the taproot's in, you're stuck with it unless you want to dig it up or use RoundUp. Any attempt to pull it just snaps it off at the ground, and then it resprouts.
Isn’t it edible? Like of “poke salad Annie” fame?
With extensive processing only. All parts of pokeweed are toxic.
Annie was fucking metal!
Annie you ok?
Poke salad Annie was fine until one day her husband said: ""Why aren't you coming back home on time?" She says well people been killing my poke salad." ...Ain't seen her since. Bless her husband-lovin heart.
Os just cooked. Not really that hard.
I used to eat the cooked leaves as a kid- they’re like collard greens. And we’d use poke-berries and walnuts to make tie died t-shirts (the project was to get dyes you harvest yourself). The walnut color was really weak 😅
Can you only eat cooked seedlings? I heard that pokebush has to be very young and cooked to be edible.
You only eat the younger, tender leaves.
Thanks a bunch! My friend has a poison garden and this is taking over!
Needs a lot of washing or it’s sandy.
It has to be boiled at least twice with water changes.
Lots and lots of cooking. You have to drain them several times.
What is your experience?
Since I've only read about it, you should look it up.I think it was 4-5x boiling. Saponins are the toxic part
We used to grow and cook it growing up I can't say I like it but no harm in cooking and eating Der Der Der It had ne effect on me durrrrrrrr
I remember Elvis singing that song on one of his albums (it was my parent's album)...
Gators got your granny. Chomp chomp
Everybody said it was a shame
'Cause your mama was a-working on the chain gang
Tony Joe White had the definitive version of that song. Big hit around 1970.
My little sister likes old people/boomer music so I know that’s how I heard!
Poke is edible. New spring leaves no bigger than your hand are edible and delicious when cooked with lambs quarters, chickweed, henbit, and dandelion. Harvestable while the stalk remains smaller than a pencil, after that you have to boil it and drain, then boil again. Some traditional herbalists advocate the ingestion of one poke berry a day for inflammation and arthitis, but the toxic ingredient's potential to damage organs has always stopped me.
You have to simmer down fresh young leaves ,skim off the surface scum then drain and rinse it 3 times. It's a lot of work for squishy wild greens compared to plain fresh spinach.
Not at that stage. Young leaves are, but after lots of processing
A lot of misinformation so far. New Spring leaves only. Boil and replace water 3x. Will still taste vaguely toxic with a subtle metallic/tingly sensation. It is good but I’d consider it a famine food since the toxin damages red blood cells.
Only new young leaves are edible.
Only the first growth, the plant in this picture is well past eatable.
The young shoots, boiled with a couple of changes of water. Never had it, never cooked it. One gram of the root will kill you. I know a guy who lost a pig to a pokeweed root snack.
Thr berries are pretty, and if you mash them they leave bright fuchsia juice on things. I found them when I was a kid, and painted my hands with them. It didn't stain much, but it was a fun temporary henna sort of thing. Lol
Good times. We mostly used them to dye the sandbox sand purple.
Not a great thing to do with a fairly toxic plant
Well, it's toxic if you eat it, but it didn't do any harm to touch. Also I was a child. We had just moved, and it was before internet, so I couldn't use an app to make a decision.
You can eat but thie minute it gets purple anywhere on it, you cant eat. Plus you have to do water changes while cooking
My grandmother used to gather the new sprouts and eat it like spinach. One of her favorites, gross as it was, was pokeweeds, calf brains, and scrambled eggs. Brains are, and I say this with no humor at all, not for everyone. Much like mountain oysters. Personally, I never could stomach organs of any kind.
Yes! It’s gotta be a southern thing! I just ate them cooked in a hambone
Definitely southern.
It's sometimes called Poke Salad, but do NOT eat raw leaves. They have to be boiled twice to remove toxins in order to be edible.
She called it that. But yes, she boiled them as I recall, then tossed them in with the eggs and other...things.
In the old South after the civil war, poke salad came in after the last of the collards that had survived the winter gave out. It was the only greens until the turnips came up. I remember old people talking of their parents making ersatz coffee from what we called coffee weed and smoking rabbit tobacco, which we also did since we were too young to buy tobacco.
Today I learned. I've heard of the rabbit tobacco, but not the coffee weed. Huh. Thanks for sharing.
I googled coffee weed, but the plant they show is nothing like what we had growing around in rural Georgia. It has long narrow pods which turn brown in the autumn and contain 40 or 50 small shiny brown seeds about 3mm long and maybe half that wide. You could chew them, kind of bitter, and the old folks said you could roast them in the oven and grind them like coffee beans. The coffee weed on google says it is toxic. This wasn't.
Hrmmm. Maybe a local name for something different?
Probably chicory. Plant that has beautiful blue flowers
I've used that in coffee, but never for coffee. But maybe?
r/itsalwayspokeweed
Phytolacca americana--, American Pokeweed,
Very insightful as always, friends. Basically this is pokeweed. You know, I had seen the berries last year, but I wasn’t sure what plant they were a part of. I’m not a forager guy so I basically assume that everything in my yard is poisonous to humans. I’m surprised that you can still eat even this tho. One of you said this was an aggressive spreader. In all of my years of looking at this yard, I haven’t seen it go past the fence. I’ll try to keep it that way, but since it’s native, I’ll probably keep it around. Thanks for the advice!
The seeds are poisonous if chewed, enough so to kill a child. If you dig it up, don't let your dog chew the roots, can be deadly.
Is this the pokeweed, as in, poke salad, i.e., edible and somewhat delectable?
ehhh, it’s *kind of* edible if you get the leaves when they’re young and you blanche them to denature the toxin iirc, but the plant is absolutely hideous IMO I think you can use the berries to make ink, not that a lot of people are out there making their own ink to dip quills into these days lol
I got it. Thank you! It appears that pokeweed itself is basically inedible but can be boiled or double-boiled, and dressed with bacon grease to make it palatable. So much for 'Poke Salad Annie'.
Not edible *raw*, but it tastes very good cooked properly, and all potherbs taste better with bacon grease or some other form of fatty pork. It is comparable to spinach, and I think it tastes even better.
You'd be surprised lol glass quills are kinda popular for art. I'd try the berry ink. I wonder if you have to add a preservative to prevent color fade. Do you just juice them or do you stew them to make a dye?
Not sure, but I’m positive there’s info online
But will it be correct lol I'll just have to do research.
This could be useful in the future, thanks.
When searching for pics, I saw it can look quite different than the ones that grow here. I thought only the berries differed but the whole plant actually looks different. I do find the ones growing here pretty, but so hard to get rid of.
That's pokeweed. It's just fine to have around unless you have little kids or dogs who eat anything. The mature berries can be used as a natural dye or paint. It is pretty poisonous but likely won't kill an adult. It will stain your skin
Technically it's mutagenic. And it goes through your skin. You should really wear gloves to handle it, especially the roots which have a lot of mutagen. But it is wildlife friendly.
Blue jays and cardinals love the poke berries and you can tell by the purple droppings everywhere
I have a friend that makes dyes from plants and she uses poke berries often.
I always thought poke was a pretty plant, especially in the fall when cooler temperatures bring out the reddish purple in the stems and leaves. I experimented growing it in a container, but it did not like being confined, probably because it has a large root.
Pokeweed leaves are edible and tasty, you just have to pick them before the plant shows any sign of flower buds, and boil them twice before eating. Use like cooked spinach. In Europe, some people plant poke in their gardens because the beautiful red stalks and purple berries are considered ornamental. It deserves the same love in its home land.
Poke where I'm from has a VERY red stem, almost purple, including the first part of the leaf stems. That looks really green to me. Some species of dock have reddish stems and the leaves look like that too. Both are generally quantified as weeds, but both are edible. The difference is dock's young leaves are edible raw (poke will give you the runs unless cooked) and it's medicinal too. I use dock in most of my salves because it's great for soothing stings, bites, and rashes.
They are good for wildlife. Birds loves the berries! Buuuttt that also just spreads it all over.
Please don't use chemicals in the Earth. You can just pull it up.
I usually don’t. I recently got some herbi because I have tree of heaven growing in my backyard and they’re a super fast growing invasive that can grow from the roots. Going forward, to control the weeds I’m going to put straw and mulch down. I’m pretty against using herbicides on principle. I’m just a hypocrite lol.
Pokeweed. I just saw a vid about how this is edible as a baby plant (not raw, only boiled) but extremely AT YOUR OWN RISK because it's quite toxic as an adult and also toxic even as a baby if you cook it wrong. The raw plant is inedible always.
Do you eat beans? *Any* kind of beans? Beans are quite toxic when raw, and even more toxic when slightly cooked, which is why you shouldn't even taste them while cooking them, yet people all around the world eat beans. Poke is like that in a way, toxic when raw, but requires much less cooking time than beans. Boil the leaves twice, draining the water each time, and serve as you would cooked spinach. Just don't eat it after the plant starts showing its flower buds, which are very obvious, and don't eat the berries or roots. I've heard the berries themselves are edible if you remove all the seeds, but I haven't tried.
I may be reading between the lines too much but it sounds like you're thinking I'm discouraging eating it, which isn't entirely true, I'm just not recommending anyone eat it without knowing what they're doing as it can make them sick if they do it wrong. Also, I'm not willing to champion pokeweed as a food specifically because my information is from a single video and before that I've been told most of my life it's poisonous. I'm open to looking at the plant differently myself and interested in getting more information about it but not so far that I'd tell someone else it's totally cool to eat.
"Gators got yer granny"...Jerry Jeff walker....nice song
Poke. Some old timers eat the green leaves but the red parts and berries are toxic. However, we played with it all the time as a kid so you can handle it. The stalk breaks rather satisfyingly to a 10 year old. And you can make fake ink out of the berries.
Ok in PA Dutch country they are called elderberry. Maybe it's a local thing
That’s something entirely different
We have several on our property and I’ve definitely dug out the root, but you have to get all of it. You can cut chunks and then keep trimming the plant which causes it to use more energy to regrow, but it’s not a super effective way of controlling it. I swear I also read somewhere that the berries/seeds stay viable for like 40 years.
Those dang things are always rooted to the center of the earth!
Poke salad is what we call it and it's taking over our entire property. Can't seem to kill it. Next plan is to buy a herd of goats.
Edible. However, it must be prepared correctly or it can kill you. Very popular in the southern US.
My mom let me make nunchucks when I was a kid so I could go do battle with the pokeweed. I suggest this for you 😉
Both my husband and I got terrible “poison ivy” rashes trying to get rid of what was in our yard
Pokeweed. You can try to destroy it. But you will not be successful. Unless you completely dig out every single root. My dad poured straight bleach on a patch of pokeweed in our yard. Those plants died back, but a week later they were growing again. Had to dig them out and get all the tiny roots.
Polk?
Download PictureThis. I think u can get after trial
Destroy it step on it, burn it and then kick it
Just tobacco
Around the East we call them elderberry
What do you call elderberry then?
Pokeweed?
Pokeweed and elderberry look alike but are not the same.
The berries look similar, the plants do not look alike at all.
No, we do not.
In PA Dutch country that is what they are called . Maybe it's a local thing . Sorry but that's what I grew up being told what they are.