Delicious and nutritious when harvested and prepared correctly, yet toxic and deadly when handled carelessly, pokeweed represents both the delight and fear often associated with foraging wild edibles.
Most people know about the edibility of pokeweed. It ranks up there in common herblore knowledge with the dandelion and sassafras for its familiarity as an edible plant. Called by many different names (poke, poke salad, poke sallit, inkberry, pigeon berry, and skoke), most people can easily recognize the mature plant with its grape-like clusters of dark purple berries full of magenta-colored juice and tiny little seeds and its emerald egg-shaped leaves that grow alternately on the stem.
Poke grew as tall as small trees all along the fence of my back yard where I lived as a child in the Ozarks. I remember the first time I crushed one of the berries between my fingers and discovered the stain that the juices left behind. Immediately, my young mind realized that I could use pokeberries for primitive ink. It didn’t take me long to find a turkey feather to carve into a quill and begin scrawling in the beautiful pink ink.
My grandmother knew of poke’s virtues and dangers and explained them as she cooked up “a mess of poke salad” for my family when we moved in to our little house in the hills. She explained to me the way to harvest the plant, noting what to look for and what to avoid. In a nutshell, the young leaves and stalks (up to 6 or 8 inches in height) make the safest greens for your plate. Avoid plants after they begin to develop flowers, and either peel or avoid stalks that have purple outer skin. When boiled in two or three changes of water to remove any toxins, the leaves and stalks taste delightful with a flavor reminiscent of asparagus.
The stalks, mature leaves, flowers, berries and root of the pokeweed contain compounds that have some pretty scary effects on the human body. Drugs.com lists the symptom of pokeweed poisoning to include “severe stomach cramping, nausea with persistent diarrhea and vomiting, slow and difficult breathing, weakness, spasms, hypotension, severe convulsions, and death”.[1] They also note that “severe poisonings have been [sic] reported in adults who ate mature pokeweed leaves”[1] so make certain to get only the youngest leaves from the plants before the flowers form.
But please don’t let the dangers of pokeweed scare you away from this delicious plant. The properly harvested and prepared leaves and shoots not only taste wonderful, they contain an abundance of vitamins and minerals–even after a preparation that involves so much boiling. A 100g serving of poke shoots contains calcium (631mg), phosphorus (524mg), of iron (20.2mg), vitamin A (62mg), Thiamine (0.95mg), Riboflavin (3.93mg), Niacin (14.3mg), and a ton of vitamin C (1619mg).[2]
Treat this plant with respect, and it will treat you to a fine meal.
~ written in e-prime ~
(except for the title)
how wonderfully informative and interesting!!
i LOVE, once again, imagining a young rixie…this time with feather and berries in hand. wow.
and also reading about your grandmother and her poke salad–love it.
maybe we need to change our tap tap tap to poke poke poke. :)
hey asshole, you better not be poke, poke, pokin’ my wife, understand? though really, i’m somewhat nervous having read that, for just 15 minutes ago, i ate an entire poke plant that was purple and peeling AND 26 inches tall…
i’ll see you later.
um, that was NOT ME. doug sabotaged me, obviously.
gross, DOUG–that was NOT what i meant. u r 2 much.
Ha! You kids.
So, I think we’ll just leave “tap tap tap” as it is. I’ll leave the poking up to Doug–who is probably shitting himself to death at the moment.
Good to know. I just thought it was toxic with no edible or medicinal qualities. I have some growing in my backyard as we speak. I’ll have to give it a closer look.
my 3 year old ate just 2 of the berries, whats the the effects of two.
Jake R
It’s really hard to say. I have heard of people eating cooked berries in pies before, but I would imagine that a lot of the toxins which give the plant its purple color reside in the berries.
I would play it safe and call the poison control center (1-800-222-1222) or your child’s physician to find out more.
Poke should only be eaten in the spring, as a young plant & it needs to be COOKED (boiled). Don’t eat it if there are flowers or red on the plant. Also, Poke SALAD is a misnomer & dangerously misleading as it implies the plant can be eaten raw. The correct term is sallit, which just means pot herb. It is not necessary to change the cooking water which throws away vitamins and wastes water.
Hey all,
Just looking for some recipes and came here to read about poke.
Well I will just say that I have eaten poke for many years and want to dispell those crazy internet rumors about the toxic nature of poke weed.
The mature plant is toxic, very much so.
However the small shoots, no bigger than the hand can be eaten safely and raw. There is no need to ruin the plant and all its nutritional value by boiling it.
My gaandma and my mother have always used the no bigger than you hand method of collecting pokeweed and I am still here to tell you that it works.
And I have a big mess of poke in the fridge right now.
Nothing like poke and eggs in the morning, or at lunch, or for that matter anytime of day.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Evolouie. I have heard of folks eating it without boiling, but I had never heard the “no bigger than the hand” rule to go along with those anecdotes. So, thanks for filling in that piece of the puzzle for me.
Do you (or does anyone) know if the “no bigger than your hand” rule still applies to renascent plants? For example, I cut a small NBTYH plant and eat it. The plant will regrow from the same roots. Is the regrowth as safe to eat raw following the NBTYH rule as a new plant?