Read About the Buckwheat Family

BUCKWHEAT FAMILY (Polygonaceae)

Common Persicaria, Pink Knotweed, or Join tweed; Smartweed

Polygonum pennsylvanicum

Flowers--Very small, pink, collected in terminal, dense, narrow obtuse spikes, 1 to 2 in. long. Calyx pink or greenish, 5-parted, like petals; no corolla; stamens 8 or less; style 2-parted. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, simple or branched; often partly red, the joints swollen and sheathed; the branches above, and peduncles glandular. Leaves: Oblong, lance-shaped, entire edged, 2 to 11 in. long, with stout midrib, sharply tapering at tip, rounded into short petioles below.

Preferred Habitat--Waste places, roadsides, moist soil.

Flowering Season--July-October.

Distribution--Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico; westward to Texas and Minnesota.

Everywhere we meet this commonest of plants or some of its similar kin, the erect pink spikes brightening roadsides, rubbish heaps, fields, and waste places, from midsummer to frost. The little flowers, which open without method anywhere on the spike they choose, attract many insects, the smaller bees (Andrena) conspicuous among the host. As the spreading divisions of the perianth make nectar-stealing all too easy for ants and other crawlers that would not come in contact with anthers and stigma where they enter a flower near its base, most buckwheat plants whose blossoms secrete sweets protect themselves from theft by coating the upper stems with glandular hairs that effectually discourage the pilferers. Shortly after fertilization, the little rounded, flat-sided fruit begins to form inside the persistent pink calyx. At any time the spike-like racemes contain more bright pink buds and shining seeds than flowers. Familiarity alone breeds contempt for this plant, that certainly possesses much beauty. The troublesome and wide-ranging weed called lady's thumb is a near relative.

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 traveling 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.