By Burt Glover

I had always cut down the pesky pokeweed plant that emerged by my front door every spring, but, one year, I decided to let it grow. And let me tell you — it did grow! From the comfort of the living room sofa, I watch its progression outside the front window.

The plant quickly grew to 6 feet tall. I was pleased that its giant leaves — some upwards of 12 inches long — were providing much needed shade to my glassed-in porch. The plant was simply beautiful! As the flower clusters began appearing on short stubs throughout the plant, I witnessed a host of pollinators, including bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, visiting the small white flowers.

Green berries soon appeared everywhere, eventually turning into deep purple-black, five-inch-long clusters of berries. With the berries came the birds. The resident mockingbird valiantly tried to defend “his” stash of fruits, and I watched as he would alight on various branches, hopping up to grab a berry. He, evidently, couldn’t guard all day. As a result, various other birds — cardinals, brown thrashers, catbirds, mourning doves, and others — sneaked in to partake of the treasured fruits.   

At one point, I noticed that the bottom leaves of the plant were developing holes. The culprit here turned out to be a wooly bear-type caterpillar, the larval stage of the giant leopard moth. As I began to watch the daily progress of this caterpillar, it disappeared – probably eagerly devoured by a catbird or brown thrasher. If you ever do happen to see a giant leopard moth, though, I guarantee it will knock your socks off. 

The year progressed to late summer, and the pokeweed continued to grow to upwards of 8 feet, or more, tall. The entire plant — stalk and stems — changed to a beautiful deep wine color. More flowers, more berries followed.

Being of somewhat of a mathematical mind, I had to know the impact of my one plant. With an average of 10 seeds per berry, and 30-50 berries per cluster, and upwards of 50-100 clusters on a large plant over the course of a summer…. Holy cow! No wonder there are so many pokeweeds in the landscape!

Poke Salet

Many people, including me, love to eat poke salet. This has been a springtime ritual in America for hundreds of years. The plant must first be properly processed, however, because it is toxic in its raw state. Look up American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) to learn more about the toxicity. It is the same with other familiar foods. Cashews, a close relative of poison ivy, are toxic in their raw form. So is tapioca. All of these foods must be properly prepared, or they can sicken and even kill. So you will want to do your research: first, to correctly identify the plant, then, to properly prepare it.

Here’s how I do it.

• Locate and correctly identify a pokeweed plant.
• Pick the young, green shoots in the spring, usually 6 to 8 inches tall. Cut those shoots, taking care to avoid including any part of the root. [I make sure that the shoots don’t have that white, hollow, pithy center… just because.]
• Boil those shoots for a minute or two. Drain.
• Boil again in fresh water for 15 minutes. Drain.

That is all that is required but, because I am a nervous-type of guy, I repeat the fourth step. The leaves taste like a type of spinach or chard. Some people like to take it a step further and saute the leaves in bacon grease or olive oil, or even cut the stems into sections, bread with cornmeal, and fry like okra. It is all quite tasty.

Until sometime in the 1990’s, you could buy “Poke Sallet Greens” in most grocery stores, canned by Allen’s of Siloam Springs, Arkansas. (They are the same company who canned Popeye Spinach and VegAll mixed vegetables.) They ceased canning poke in the 90’s due to the lack of people willing to go out and collect the plants.  

While many see pokeweed as an pesky weed, it’s actually quite a remarkable plant, between its beauty and its service as a food source for so many bird species, as well as raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and even mice. There is also its utility as a dye and ink, the latter being the source for one of its many alternate names — inkberry, The use of this ink in letter writing during the Civil War is well documented. The plant also has numerous medicinal traditions that go back centuries.

For me, pokeweed has been a lesson on how an undesirable plant can become desirable.    

_________________

Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond