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POKEWEED FAMILY (Phytolaccaceae)
Pokeweed; Scoke; Pigeon-berry; Ink-berry; Garget
Phytolacca decandra
Flowers--White, with a green centre, pink tinted outside, about
1/4 in. across, in bracted racemes 2 to 8 in. long. Calyx of 4 or 5 rounded
persistent sepals, simulating petals; no corolla; 10 short stamens;
10-celled ovary, green, conspicuous; styles curved. Stem: Stout,
pithy, erect, branching, reddening toward the end of summer, 4 to 10 ft.
tall, from a large, perennial, poisonous root. Leaves: Alternate,
petioled, oblong to lance-shaped, tapering at both ends, 8 to 12 in. long.
Fruit: Very juicy, dark purplish berries, hanging in long clusters
from reddened footstalks; ripe, August-October.
Preferred Habitat--Roadsides, thickets, field borders, and waste
soil, especially in burnt-over districts.
Flowering Season--June-October
Distribution--Maine and Ontario to Florida and Texas.
When the Pokeweed is "all on fire with ripeness," as Thoreau said; when
the stout vigorous stem (which he coveted for a cane), the large leaves, and
even the footstalks, take on splendid tints of crimson lake, and the dark
berries hang heavy with juice in the thickets, then the birds, with
increased hungry families, gather in flocks as a preliminary step to
travelling southward. Has the brilliant, strong-scented plant no ulterior
motive in thus attracting their attention at this particular time? Surely!
Robins, flickers, and downy woodpeckers, chewinks and rose-breasted
grosbeaks, among other feathered agents, may be detected in the act of
gormandizing on the fruit, whose undigested seeds they will disperse far and
wide. Their droppings form the best of fertilizers for young seedlings;
therefore the plants which depend on birds to distribute seeds, as most
berry-bearers do, send their children abroad to found new colonies, well
equipped for a vigorous start in life. What a hideous mockery to continue to
call this fruit the Pigeon-berry, when the exquisite bird whose favorite
food it once was, has been annihilated from this land of liberty by the
fowler's net! And yet flocks of wild pigeons, containing not thousands but
millions of birds, nested here even thirty years ago. When the market became
glutted with them, they were fed to hogs in the West!
Children, and some grown-ups, find the deep magenta juice of the
Ink-berry useful. Notwithstanding the poisonous properties of the root, in
some sections the young shoots are boiled and eaten like asparagus,
evidently with no disastrous consequences.
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