Our dragon berries are prolific this year, their purple-black berries hanging in lush clusters all along the fence lines. Not too long ago, these plants were absent from our farm, but the last dozen years have seen a steady and somewhat alarming increase of this native plant.
You may already know it by another of its common names: pokeberry. This plant comes with quite a resume of labels, depending on which part of eastern North America where you might be standing: inkberry, pigeon berry, Indian poke, poke sallet, dragon berry and poke weed are all interchangeable names for the same plant.
Its scientific name, phytolacca americana, provides a bit of insight to the background of this plant. “Phyto” means plant, and “lacca” refers to the Kerri lacca scale insect that produces the crimson sap which is used in making shellac. More in a moment about the mixed bag of chemicals found within the cells of this large wildflower.
Being a native plant, the name pigeon berry goes back to pre-1900 when the now extinct passenger pigeons were uber common in Simcoe County. As these large birds ate and spread copious amounts of ripe beech nuts and acorns across the land, they often refuelled on these juicy berries.
My first encounter with this eye-catching wildflower was in the nearby Copeland Forest (actually, the location was on Horseshoe Valley Resort property, but in 1978 nobody really knew where all the boundary lines were located). Not only were the glossy black berries easy to see, but so were the quartet of ‘drunk’ robins sitting on the ground below.
Apparently the berries contain enough sugar to ferment into a potion that addles the mind of migrating birds. Luckily, most birds that consume this food source survive with no ill effects. Catbirds, thrashers, bluebirds, cardinals and mourning doves are just some of the avian diners that use these juicy berries as a food source.
Now, before you go flying out the door with a collecting bucket, please note that humans, horses, sheep, and pigs have died from eating these fruits. It’s apparently a nasty way to exit this world.
A few mammals, such as opossum, bear, white-footed mouse and raccoon, do seem to survive the toxins, so it’s a bit misleading to think that you can forage these readily available fruits.
And so pokeberry finds itself in the middle of a contentious situation whereas some people claim them to be inedible and poisonous, while others tout the amazing healing properties of ingesting poke weed.
In the deep south of eastern North America, the new growing shoots of poke weed are often gathered in the spring and, after several changes of boiling water, are used as a dietary supplement.
This poke salad, or poke sallet as it’s called locally down there, was immortalized by Elvis Presley when he sang Tony Joe White’s 1968 song, “Poke Salad Annie.” How many other plants do you know of that have been so honoured in song?
A couple of YouTube videos shows a guy picking and processing the poke berries, making an anti-rheumatic jam, and feeding his family his wild concoction (I wonder if a later follow-up video was ever made? You know, by the survivors).
Like any wild plant, a wide range of toxins will be found within, and just how readily your body assimilates or rejects those toxins will provide that phrase, “Granny made jam from these berries for years!” Uh-huh, maybe your Granny, but not mine.
A bit of research reveals that pokeberry does indeed contain a wide range of chemicals and many are being studied for medicinal uses. And other uses, like repelling zebra mussels from underwater intakes. Mmm, sounds so delicious ... not!
The crimson juice from the berries is quite staining, hence the name ink berry. There are a couple of myths floating around about this paper dying ability: in America the Declaration of Independence was written with poke berry juice, and in Canada the Jesuit missionaries of the 1600s used the juice to write on birch bark parchment. Both instances have proven to be false ... great stories, but false.
However, despite the above disclaimer, soldiers of the American Civil War wrote letters home in the 1700s using pokeberry juice mixed with other ingredients. Real ink was hard to come by on the front line and expensive wherever one could find it.
For a variety of reasons, this plant has exploded in population over the last few years. For me, it was that one plant in 1978, then a cluster discovered on a property just east of that first location in 1989. A few plants showed up in our fields in 2018, and now the long fenceline between us and our corn-growing neighbours is 50 per cent pokeweed and 50 per cent burdock.
While I still find pokeweed to be attractive and unique, this burgeoning population is of concern to those who grow cattle and horse feed, as it has real potential to poison the crop harvest. Thus it has come onto the radar of the invasive plant folks, which makes this one of the few native plants to be so studied (invasives are almost always foreign-based species).
Although the autumn leaves are falling readily, these berries will be hanging on until the first snowfall, so keep an eye open for these unique plants on your fall walks.