Solved: Poke Weed

[Jeff]

Here is one for you guys to tackle. Here is what I know, and that aint much. I DO NOT know what this is.

It is not a woody plant.
It grws to 8 to 10 foot tall in 1 season, then dies back to nothing. It grows, sometimes 4 to 6 inches a day. This specimen is right next to the transformer at the mill and already 7 to 8 ft. High, and across. The only other place I have ever seen it, is at the edge of our mill woods, growing in an old rotten sawdust pile. In the fall the berrys will get soft, and as blue as blue berries. They are blue all the way through, and the juice is like ink. It dyes or stains anything they contact. If you squish one in your hand, your hand is blue till it wears off.



Nothing appears to eat the berries, I take it they are probably toxic. Birds don't go near it when the berries are ripe.

[swampwhiteoak]

My grandmaw used to make us salad with this plant!  The plant is poisonous, although the young leaves aren't.  The root is lethal.  Called pokeweed or just poke.

[Tom]

Yep, Swampwhitoak, I concur.....Poke weed.

[Texas Ranger]

Ya'll sayin it wrong - Poke Salat!

Yankees.

[Tom]

I uster say that, but I been edikated. Went to UGa