Pokeweed, poke salad, poke sallat—Phytolacca americana has man colloquial names due in part to its wide geographic spread. Its names are just as diverse as the ways in which humans see it: for some of us it’s a traditional wild food, for others it’s a source of dye. It can also be a weed, an invasive, a medicinal plant, or a pesticide. Sometimes Phytolacca americana is cultivated as a landscaping plant, adding to its long list of potential garden roles. The Gardzen Test Gardens are located in coastal North Carolina, where we refer to Phytolacca americana as “poke salad”, so that’s the name we’ll be using (mostly) throughout this article. Whatever you call it, join us as we learn a bit more about this always-remarkable, sometimes-infuriating plant. Let’s dig in!
Gardzen Executive Summary
· First and foremost: while Phytolacca americana is a traditional food in many places, it is toxic to humans and pets if not processed properly. For those of us who aren’t experts in preparing poke salad for human consumption, it’s best to avoid eating it.
· Native to eastern North America and most common in the US South and Midwest, poke salad has spread widely across the continent and even overseas. It’s now an invasive weed in Japan.
· Poke salad (Phytolacca americana) has many uses, but due to its toxicity a bit of care is required when handling it.
· Phytolacca americana doesn’t produce a topical reaction in most people, so if it’s growing in the garden we can just remove it like any other weed. Wear gloves just to be safe; some sensitive folks may experience dermatitis after contact with the sap!
· As a wild plant, poke salad (Phytolacca americana) provides food for a number of bird species and even a number of mammals that can tolerate its toxins.
· Phytolacca americana has also been enshrined in song, specifically the 1968 hit “Poke Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White. The lyrics describe the life of a poor Southern family that gathers and eats poke salad as a staple food.
The Ecology and Botany of Phytolacca americana
Despite its partial reputation as a weed, poke salad is a surprisingly complex plant in its own right. As a prominent member of the Phytolaccaceae family (also known as the Pokeweed family), Phytolacca americana is an attention-grabbing plant. It grows rapidly in the summer months, often reaching a height of 8 feet/2.5 meters, with large glossy leaves, purple-green stems and stalks, and lovely white flower clusters that eventually become shiny purple-black berries. Poke salad grows a long, deep-running taproot that can be difficult to remove from the soil.
We mentioned its many names earlier, but we were a little surprised to learn from our research than Phytolacca americana has even more monikers than we initially thought. In addition to the familiar-to-us pokeweed, poke salad, and poke sallat, this wide-ranging plant is also sometimes known as pigeonberry, Virginia poke, inkberry, or red berry. Phytolacca americana has been adopted as a medicinal plant in Traditional Chinese Medicine, where it’s known as chuíxù shānglù (垂序商陸).
Poke salad can thrive under a wide variety of soil and climate conditions. It is especially common on recently disturbed ground; birds eat the berries and spread the seeds far and wide and this plant grows fast when it has a chance. Recently cleared ground and new landscaping are also spots where pokeweed might pop up during its spring and summer growing season. The plant ranges pretty widely, now found across large swaths of the US and southern Canada.
The Uses and Dangers of Poke Salad
Poke salad’s versatility and diversity show in its many uses—and its potential risks and dangers. While it gained some status as an ornamental plant in the 18th and 19th centuries, poke salad has a number of more practical roles. Traditionally, Phytolacca americana was intentionally gathered or cultivated by many different cultures for many different reasons. Native Americans in what is now the Southeastern US used Phytolacca americana as a medicinal plant, specifically to treat skin diseases and joint or muscle pain. European settlers learned these medical applications, and expanded on them; pokeweed was used to treat conditions as diverse as mumps, rashes, and arthritis through the early 20th century. It was also used as a weight loss drug. Settlers also made a high-quality red dye from the roots of the plant.
While some alternative medicine advocates still recommend Phytolacca americana as a medicinal, poke salad is most commonly used today as a food plant. Throughout the US South, Appalachia, and parts of the US Midwest and Oklahoma, the young leaves of poke salad gathered in the spring and used as a cooked green. The stems, we’re told, can also be boiled and consumed like asparagus. It takes an expert understanding of the plant in order to do this; again we must remember that poke salad (Phytolacca americana) is toxic if consumed without proper preparation. Unless we know exactly what we’re doing, it’s best to avoid using it for food.
The toxicity of Phytolacca americana is worth discussing in its own right, both for the risks it may pose and for the diversity of its uses. The chemistry is complex and we’re not sure we fully understanding so if you know more or can explain it please let us know in the comments. In brief, all parts of the plant are toxic to all mammals, although some species tolerate it enough to use poke salad as occasional food. While the plant has a bitter taste that generally discourages consumption, accidents do happen. Livestock have been poisoned when pokeweed got mixed into their feed. Human children are susceptible to accidental poisoning if they confuse poke salad berries for a healthy food. Symptoms may include vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, and difficulty breathing. If the does is high enough, death may result from respiratory paralysis. With all that in mind, it may be wise to remove poke salad from your garden space just to be on the safe side, depending on your situation.
If you suspect that someone has ingested pokeweed accidentally, contact emergency medical services immediately.
Even poisons have their use, however: the toxins in pokeweed have been used in pest control, specifically as a countermeasure for the invasive zebra mussels clogging waterways around the world. It goes to show that there are no bad plants; just plants growing where we don’t want them. Every plant has an ecological role and every plant has something to teach us if we approach it respectfully and cautiously.
A Complex, Challenging Plant
Phytolacca americana is one of those plants we find especially challenging: it’s beautiful but potentially dangerous to humans. It can be useful but it must be handled carefully. It fills a number of ecological niches but it can also be an invasive. For us, it’s a reminder that the plant world evolves to meet its own needs and the needs of the environment around it and that our attempts to control plants via gardening and agriculture should adapt to that rather than fight it. While we won’t be harvesting or cooking this plant anytime soon, it’s worth knowing about .
As always, we’re still learning and we want to hear from you! If you have experiences with poke salad, if you’ve cooked it yourself, or if you’ve seen it in your garden, let us know in the comments!
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