Anyone know what this is?

[sasha_feather]

Growing in my back yard in Wisconsin

< alt='A green plant with pink stems and round seed pods ' />

Comments

[redbird]

That's pokeweed.

The birds love the berries, but they will leave purple stains on your hands or clothing if you handle them.

We have a lot of it growing along the side of the house, because the Audubon Society recommends it as a good plant for wildlife in my part of Massachusetts, so when the plants turned up in what had been a lettuce bed I left them. (The lettuce was done anyhow.)

[theora]

Yep, pokeweed.

It's pretty poisonous, though the young leaves are edible with much processing (do not eat on my say so!!). Folk history has it that the Declaration of Independence was written in ink made from pokeberries. It's particularly pretty as the berries ripen to dark purple while the stems go bright pink. OTOH, it spreads easily by seed and has a massive taproot, so can be tough to get rid of if you let it get established. At my house I let it grow in some places and remove it in others.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you! :D

[sasha_feather]

Interesting! Thank you!

[alatefeline]

Looks like pokeweed IIRC.

[transposable_element]

Have you ever read the Melendy books, by Elizabeth Enright? They are kids' books from the 1940's, and they include a lot of love for the natural world. There's a chapter of one book (A Spiderweb for Two) in which one of the characters gets lost trying to get through "a mess of pokeweed" and is saved by an old woman who turns out to be a fount of herb lore.

[sasha_feather]

Cute!!

[dantesspirit]

Pokeberry weed! Great for natural dyeing, berries are poisonus to pets, so don't let your dogs or outdoor cats, if you have any, eat them.

[alatefeline]

Is it pokeweed???

[alatefeline]

*facepalm* Argh, somebody already answered this (and I already looked at it), please ignore me being forgetful.

[sasha_feather]

It was nice to be reminded of this in the dead of winter. It's a neat plant. For some reason I've never seen it before this last summer!

[conuly]

It's gorgeous when it ripens, isn't it?

But yes, it's a nuisance to remove if you let it get established, and it does take over.

I'm told it's only the seeds that are poison and you can eat the berries proper so long as you spit the seeds out, but I wouldn't risk it. It's also possible to eat the leaves if you boil them several times in fresh changes of water, but I wouldn't waste the effort either - if you can't afford spinach, ask the grocery store if you can take away their beet greens. Hell, I've had people practically pay me to take that away!