Pokeweed

I thought about this nuisance plant, Pokeweed, yesterday during my daily walk. It grows abundantly along the edge of our property and seeing it made me wonder if it is familiar to others living elsewhere as it is to those of us forced to constantly remove it from our flowerbeds.

Known as pokeweed or similar names such as pokebush, pokeberry, pokeroot or poke sallet, this plant, native to the American continent, grows abundantly throughout the region.

The berries, eaten by birds, are said to be poisonous. Apparently the birds are not affected by the toxin because the small seeds with very hard outer shells remain intact in their digestive system and are eliminated whole.

A few trivia facts about pokeweed:

Pokeberries were valued by native American healers as a blood purifier, fever reducer, and pain killer. Apparently, they were knowledgeable about the inner poisonous inner seed of the berries!

There is current herbal medicine based on the plant, but it is highly dangerous to take it except from a specialized practitioner.

For many decades, poke salad ('poke salat') was a staple of cuisine in the southern states of the U.S. The leaves were cooked and rinsed at least twice to remove the harmful component, as all parts of the plant, including the leaves, are toxic unless properly prepared.

Pokeweed berries yield a red ink or dye, which was once used by Native Americans to decorate their horses.

The Constitution of the United States was written using in ink made from pokeberries. 

Many letters written home during the American Civil War were written in pokeberry ink; the writing in these surviving letters appears brown.

Pokeberries were used to write an individual's name on the sack he used to hand-pick cotton from the fields in earlier days before machines were used to harvest cotton. 

Berries

Young fruit

Ripe fruit

Flower

Brush

Unopened flower buds

Here are the lyrics to a silly little song, Polk Salad Annie,  written and performed by Tony Joe White. It also was recorded by Elvis Presley (and others). 

• [spoken]
  If some of ya'll never been down South too much...
  I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this,
  So that you'll understand what I'm talking about
  Down there we have a plant
  That grows out in the woods and the fields,
  Looks somethin' like a turnip green.
  Everybody calls it Poke salad. Poke salad.
  Used to know a girl that lived down there and
  she'd go out in the evenings and pick a mess of it...
  Carry it home and cook it for supper,
  'Cause that's about all they had to eat,
  But they did all right.
  
  [sung]
  Down in Louisiana
  Where the alligators grow so mean
  There lived a girl that I swear to the world
  Made the alligators look tame
  
  Poke salad Annie, poke salad Annie
  Everybody said it was a shame
  Cause her mama was working on the chain-gang
  (A mean, vicious woman)
  
  Everyday 'fore supper time
  She'd go down by the truck patch
  And pick her a mess o' polk salad
  And carry it home in a tote sack
  
  Poke salad Annie, 'gators got you granny
  Everybody said it was a shame
  'Cause her mama was aworkin' on the chain-gang
  (a wretched, spiteful, straight-razor totin' woman,
  Lord have mercy. Pick a mess of it)
  
  Her daddy was lazy and no count
  Claimed he had a bad back
  All her brothers were fit for
  Was stealin' watermelons out of my truck patch
  
  
  Poke salad Annie, the gators got your granny
  Everybody said it was a shame
  Cause her mama was a working' on the chain gang
  (Sock a little polk salad to me, you know I need a mess of it)