Pokeweed

Phytolacca americana

Phytolaccaceae

Magenta stems and ink-dark berries — an American roadside that looks like food and is a poison-garden lesson.

Poison-garden teaching plate. All parts are toxic. Folk ‘poke sallet’ of young shoots is a specialist, much-boiled tradition that still sends people to the clinic. Do not try it from this folio.

Parts used: None for self-care.
Traditional notes: Historical poke sallet — obsolete as a home experiment · Berry ink folklore
Grow · USDA 6b: Perennial, USDA 4–9. A common American weed. If you grow it to learn it, label it. Remove berry racemes if children visit. In work: Jul · Aug · Sep
Harvest: Do not harvest for food or medicine.

Magenta stem, hanging white flowers, black berries. Remember the picture.
Birds sow it. You do not have to.
Poke sallet is a museum recipe, not a weekend project.

Safety

All unsupervised internal use Children and the berries

Lookalikes

Elderberry — Purple-black berries on red stems look like a pie fruit. Pokeweed is a purge. Elder is a sambucus, and even that wants cooking.

Lore

Pokeberry ink wrote letters in the American 19th century and stained a thousand white shirts. ‘Poke sallet’ is a spring hunger food with a ritual of boiling that folklore treated as a spell and toxicology treats as incomplete. The root was an old emetic, which is to say a poisoning with a job. Leave it to the birds.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.