- Author: Guy B Kyser
A neighbor asked me to identify a robust perennial that keeps coming up in his garden. It had long, tropical-looking leaves and floppy racemes with small white flowers. This was a new one for me. Turned out it was common pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), a native of eastern North America. In the south some people eat it (poke salad), and a few southerners probably brought it west as a garden vegetable. But the whole plant is toxic if improperly prepared, so it’s the fugu of weeds.
A couple of weeks later my daughter brought home a stalk of purple berries and asked if she could eat them. “No,” I said, “they contain numerous saponins and oxalates.” I began to wonder if there’s more pokeweed around than I realized.
Then Gillies Robertson of Yolo RCD sent photos of a purple-berried plant found along a slough near Grimes. Common pokeweed again.
Pokeweed is in the Phytolaccaceae. This weed can grow to 10 feet tall. It dies back in winter then reemerges from the ground in spring, growing from a fat fleshy storage root. The leaves are large, 3 inches to a foot long and 1 to 5 inches wide, often with reddish stalks and lower veins. From August to October, pokeweed produces racemes of white flowers followed by reddish-purple berries. In its natural state, all parts of the plant, especially the root, are toxic to humans. Birds can eat the berries but sometimes act funny afterwards.
This plant can be found in most of the contiguous states. In drier regions, it prefers gardens and irrigated areas. Southerners with pokeweed experience suggest controlling it by digging up as much of the taproot as possible and/or by cutting off the stalks and painting the stubs with concentrated glyphosate (e.g. Roundup). Either way, treatments will probably have to be repeated until the plant’s storage reserves are worn down. And it’s a good idea to deal with pokeweed before it produces berries and seeds.
Since this is the first year I’ve seen it, and since I suddenly ran into it in three locations within a few weeks, I’m guessing that the common pokeweed population is expanding. This plant seems robust enough to cause some trouble if it becomes established in natural riparian areas.
All photos from J.M. DiTomaso and E.A. Healy, Weeds of California and Other Western States, 2007.
I have not seen this before in Amador County, Ca.
Plants, and especially weeds, can have lots of different common names in different areas of the country and world.
According to the reference "Weeds of California and other Western States", what this article called common pokeweed (Latin name: Phytolacca americana L.) is also known as: American cancer, American pokeweed, cancer jalap, coakum, garget, inkberry, pigeonberry, poke, poke sallet, pokeberry, pokeweed,red-ink plant, redweed, scoke, and Virgina poke. And that's just in the U.S.!
Take care.
Brad
I would now like to permanently remove these invasive weeds so that i can plant something desirable. What would be the best way to go about this?
If you want to use organic methods, the best thing to do is keep pulling the plants, trying to get as much of the roots as possible, and put 'em in the trash or lay them out on tarmac (or a tarp) to dry completely. It may take a couple of seasons to get all the stragglers.
If you are comfortable using herbicides, you can cut the plants and paint the cut stems with concentrated glyphosate (eg Roundup) or triclopyr (eg Garlon). The nice thing about this application method is that the chemical only goes where you put it.
It looks cool until you realize its spreading everywhere and its roots go deep.
Some references suggest that pokeweed leaves should only be harvested when they first come out of the ground - later on, the plant is too toxic - and like Ed says, it has to be prepared properly.
We have pokeweed growing along riparian areas in Chico, CA and occasionally in irrigated gardens in the city. One popped up as a seedling in my backyard and I let it grow because it reminded me of my grandfathers woods in Pennsylvania where it's native. As a boy, I enjoyed chopping them down with a pocket knife as I roamed through the woods (kind of like a light saber, but way before that concept existed!). I let the plant in my yard grow and bloom because of the interesting leaves, stems, and branching pattern but I snip off the immature berry clusters to keep it from seeding and spreading. Others come up in my yard below trees where birds drop seeds but I just weed them out when they're small seedlings. After several years I got tired of it and just dug out the main roots. Problem solved but enjoyable memories.
thank you for the information
I have one of these growing in my front flower bed amongst my cone flowers. I sprayed it with weed killer and now will dig up that monstrous root to prevent reemergence!! Thanks for the post!!