Identification difficulty: Novice
This post is a long time coming, I really should have made this post a long time ago. You see, it's bothered me for a while that pokeweed, Phytolacca americana, is such a popular edible wild plant, such a well-known plant, such a historically significant plant, and yet there is so very little info out there helping identify it when it's young and harvestable.
There is a ton of info to help identify the mature plant, which is very easy to ID. But as I wrote once before, you can't EAT pokeweed when it's mature -- it becomes fatally poisonous.
But in the early spring, they young shoots and leaves can be harvested, and, if properly prepared, are safe to eat -- even delicious. Like the best baby spinach you've ever imagined.
It's such a popular food of the American South that it's been a part of our nation's cultural heritage, even becoming the theme of a hit song, Poke Salet Annie, in the late 1960s.
If you've been curious about how to safely identify pokeweed when it's young, you've come to the right post!
Common places to look for pokeweed
Pokeweed is a transitional understory plant. Transitional meaning it thrives in the transitional period where as field and meadow become forest. It gets crowded out fairly easily by trees, so you will rarely find it in deep forest, instead look for small forest clearings (usually where a massive old tree has fallen, leaving an open space), on the edges of meadows or farmland and along man-made or animal trails. In nature, "washes" -- places where spring rainwater frequently comes down the sides of hills, clearing out small trees, frequently grow pokeweed.
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| This pokeweed is too mature to eat. But it is growing in a classic spot: on the edge between a field and woodlands |
However, if pokeweed roots get broken up, any piece of root about 2-3" long can grow a new plant. For this reason, human activity can spread pokeweed around like crazy. During excavation, construction and earth-moving, people may inadvertently break up a pokeweed plant, creating dozens more at the edges of construction, where the root-bearing dirt has been deposited.
Consequently, look for pokeweed for along the edges of suburban developments built within the past 5 years, or along any area kept clear of trees by human activity: farms, parks/playgrounds, the edges sporting fields and along trails are all good places to look.
The most pokeweed I personally ever saw was when my parents had their new Connecticut home build in 1990, when I was 10. The land had been farmland until the early 1900s, at which point it had been allowed to grow feral, reverting to forest, with tree ages not that much older than 50 years at most. There were also several clearings. In one of those clearings, where my parents build their house, there must have been at least one pokeweed plant, because when they dug the foundation, they disturbed those roots. For several years after, we had literally HUNDREDS of pokeweed plants surrounding the clearing of our home, until eventually small saplings started to grow into small trees, forcing the pokeweed out.
Young spring pokeweed identification
Many North Americans already know mature pokeweed by sight. It's hard to miss, as the plant can grow 6 feet tall and equally wide, in arching red boughs, bearing large, deep green leaves and 4-6 inch clusters of deep purple-black fruit on red stems.
The problem is, by the time pokeweed is easy to spot and identify, it's well past the point where it can be safely eaten. This post will help you identify young pokeweed in the spring, when its safe to consume (after proper preparation):
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| Super young pokeweed growth. Note the stalks of last year's plants in the background |
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| Dried up old fruit is the best way to pre-find pokeweed |
Finding young pokeweed
Pokeweed is perennial: once established, it will regrow from the roots year after year. For that reason, you can find pokeweed before it grows by finding last year's plants.
The stalks of pokeweed plants are long, hollow tubes that are beige in color, but often feature grey or black streaking and spotting. There will always be some dried up clusters of pokeweed fruit dangling from one branch or another.
Side note: because old pokeweed stalks are hollow, breaking up the tubes makes an excellent tinder/fire starter, as long as they are very dry.
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| The stalk is the most important way to identify pokeweed. Note in the slightly older plants on the right, the skin should be peeled away from the plant base before preparing it for consumption |
Stalk color and growth pattern
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| Pokeweed is safest when the skin is super thin, like this |
The stalk of young pokeweed is translucent neon green tube around a white core, covered with a super thin, translucent skin that peels away pretty easily from breaks.
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| All examples of young pokeweed looking as basic as possible |
Plant shape and growth pattern
One of the big issues with identifying young pokeweed is that it looks like. . . just so many other things at first glance.
When very young, the leaves run vertically and tightly against the stalk; they will stay in this formation until they clear any debris (soil, rocks, other plants, and last year's dead pokeweed stalks) that might snag and cause them to tear. At this stage pokeweed somewhat resembles cabbage or skunk cabbage. Once clear, the leaves will unfurl, rolling out away from the stalk to catch the light.
At the size you want, 4-8 inches, pokeweed is very leafy for it's size, and the leaves are large, emerald green or just a shade darker. Leaf growth is clustered at the top of the stalk.
If you can get a side view of the plant, most pokeweed will have some red on the base of the stem, sort of like the image on the bottom right.
The best way to spot it is just to look at lots of different images of young pokeweed, and try to familiarize yourself with it. Even once you are fairly familiar with pokeweed, expect to do a LOT of bending over to pick a plant, only to get close or even touch it and realize you were fooled again.
Though I have been correctly identifying spring pokeweed for over 30 years now, I still get tricked at first glance about 50% of the time, it's just that "common" looking at first glance.
Leaf identification features
Leaf growth
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| Very young pokeweed, still with wrinkled leaves |
As mentioned above, when very young, pokeweed leaves will be tight against the stalk, in a vertical orientation, at this stage they will also be a bright, translucent, almost neon green. This stage isn't dependent on size, it's based on how much debris the plant needs to clear. Individual plants can move into the next phase as short as 4 inches, or as tall as 8.
The leaves will also smooth out, loosing the wrinkling, and becoming more opaque, less translucent.
The leaves and their stems, called petioles, are hairless.
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| Main veins don't touch leaf edge, instead "u-turning" on each other |
Leaf color
When the leaves unfurl, they will darken in color, becoming first lime then emerald green. (Mature plant leaves are more like a spinach or kale color, but they are too old at this point.) The central mid-vein for each leaf will remain light "limeade" green in color, almost white. Leaf edges will also remain light, giving the impression that the plant is glowing.
Leaf veins
The main leaf veins (that branch off the central vein) are also light in color, though not as pale as the central vein; they are not parallel to each other, though sometimes can appear closely so. The main veins do not reach the edge of the leaf, instead they curve back and connect with other main veins, creating a round shape. As with many things in pokeweed identification, the size of these "u-turns" in the veins is quite variable; sometimes subtle, sometimes moderate and sometimes quite exaggerated. Look for the moderate or exaggerated examples to help with with your identification.
The underside of the leaf is lighter that the top, and the central vein is quite prominent and dimensional.
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| Underside |
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| At a young age, leaves are generally as long as the plant is tall |
Leaf size and shape
The leaf is very large relative to the size of the plant. At the stage you want them, each leaf might be as long as the plant is tall.
The leaf shape itself is often described as "egg-shaped" but I find that to be misleading as it implies a rounded tip. The leaves are rounded at the base, run straight for a while, or taper slightly, and then taper more dramatically to a point at the end. They are attached to the stalk via a small stem.
Leaf edges are smooth, though may show some "notches" if they have been damaged while growing. Pokeweed leaves are never toothed, lobed, or serrated (they never look like the edges of a saw).
Each leaf grows alone on it's own petiole, the leaves are NOT compound, which means multiple leaflets do not grow together to form one leaf.
Know the right parts of the plant to forage
Only the very immature, early spring pokeweed plant is edible, and should generally be harvested before it's 8 inches tall, with 4-6" being more optimal.
However, there's more to it than size. Each plant matures at a different speed, based on individual chemistry and environmental factors. It is best to check each plant for the amount of redness and the thickness of the skin on the stalk. If the skin at the base seems questionable, peal it or trim off and discard entirely.
Pokeweed root is deadly if consumed. The pokeweed root is white or pale green, but also pink or red in the transition area below ground. No below-ground portion should ever be eaten.
Remember, repeated boilings are required to render even the edible parts of pokeweed safe to eat.
In addition, if a pokeweed plant has been picked in the current season once before, it will grow back more vigorously. These plants will have redness extend farther up the stem, and the redness will be more opaque. I recommend avoiding these second growth plants, as they are more likely to be toxic. The plant is trying to "catch up" on seasonal growth.
Pokeweed look-a-likes
Honestly the at-a-glance look-a-likes for young pokeweed are too numerous to go too far into. Amaranths, very young skunk cabbage, bloodberry, invasive Japanese knotweed, and so, so many more look vaguely like it. Remember to look out for hair anywhere on the stem or leaves (not pokeweed) and the "u-turn" on the veins of the leaf.
When in doubt, the details in the stem are a dead giveaway.
Pokeweed history
Pokeweed is a very American plant, its history woven into the history of a nation.
The Declaration of Independence was written in ink made from the pokeweed berry -- a plant that doesn't grow in Europe -- as if to remind Great Britain that the fledgling nation didn't even require them for ink.
In 1845, supporters of Presidential elect James Polk wore pokeweed berries to show cheer their candidate, despite his name being spelled differently.
Civil War soldiers wrote letters home using pokeberry ink, and the stain was also used as a dye for textiles and even cosmetics from the 1800s through the 1950s.
And of course, pokeweed was eaten. Most often associated with the American South and Appalachia, pokeweed at the edible stage became know as poke sallet or poke salad, a free survival food for the impoverished.
Before the days of year-round transcontinental deliveries and greenhouse produce, fruits and vegetables were basically unavailable outside their growing season. If you could afford them, dried or canned fruits might be available, but if you were poor, you had to make do with what you could grow, or what was growing around you.
After a long winter without access to vitamin-C rich leafy greens, the human body can be at risk for the early stages of scurvy: weakness, exhaustion, body aches, bleeding gums, loose teeth and poor wound healing. Even poor families would usually keep a store of root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc), but if the harvest had been particularly bad, or the winter especially long, these stores could be depleted.
Early-season wild vegetables, like pokeweed, dock, mustards, ramps and other wild onions, were staple foods, essential for survival, but also associated with the humiliation of poverty.
In the mid-to-late 20th century (1940-1990ish), pokeweed took on a folk-hero status, a symbol of rural Southern living, and a much-loved flavor from people's childhoods. It was immortalized in the 1969 hit, "Poke Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White, a song later covered by Elvis.
Pokeweed was available in canned form from the 1950s through the early 2000s, but since those products have disappeared from store shelves, the plant is largely fading from public memory.
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