Here's your pokeweed (pic from last summer) -- over 6 ft tall.

Ken, I remember that! It was quite the phenomenon, wasn't it? It was so common that we could ID the plant without seeing a picture or reading any kind of a description. Just the title, "What is this plant?" would be enough, lol.

Has the advent of more reliable plant ID apps led to the demise of such postings?

many peeps simply dont seem to get out in the yard.. until the 4th of july ... and i suspect.. this is when the posts start ..

and by that time the plants are getting pretty large .. so they are noticeable .....

and then all the berry eaters want to eat the pretty grape like seeds.. and good luck with that ...

we will see in a few weeks ...

ken

Viburnum, yeah, I heresay they grow 'em big in KY. :) The annual European lettuce here grows 10-15 ft high by end of summer near my stream, if they don't get blown over.

This is a hilarious thread.

Plant ID requests seem to be way down on the 2 forum sites I use. No idea what's going on with other sites/social media. I don't get involved in that stuff. But I have noticed people coming to the forums to provide IDs from aps, not even checking to see if the ap was correct. Often the aps are not correct, so there are a heckuva lot of people walking around with a heckuva lot of wrong plant IDs.

^^^ I read somewhere that the accuracy of plant ID apps hovers only around 50%. Folks seem more inclined to believe in any kind of technology when it is just as fallible as the skill and experience of the programmers/app developers creating it.

Ken, I'm awfully glad that you're back ;)

I love pokeweed along the side of the road. I use the giant leaves, 8" plus wide x 20"plus long to make leaf stepping stones. Big enough for my feet but a great size to walk in between plants.

I think some people are just fine with wrong IDs, they just want a name and then drift off to the next thing they can ask the internet about.

A friend sent me a picture of the Chinese pokeweed (P. polyandra) from a garden she was visiting and it's a nice thing, but I think our common pokeweed is plenty for me.

Of course any plant has named forms because gardeners are what they are... I like 'Sunny Side Up' for its yellow foliage. Still a weed but if anyone asks I just tell them it's a native plant and they're more impressed.

if you take a weed.. and select a pretty piece.. and name it... making it a cultivar... is it still a weed ... lol .... if peeps pay a lot of money for it ...

you really need to applaud some marketing .. lol

Some kids came in my yard one time and asked if they could eat the blackberries. They were pokeweed! I told them never to eat stuff without being sure what it is. At least they asked. Hopefully they now know they know things that just ain't so.

Haha - maybe everyone's been educated about pokeweed now, thanks to this forum 😄

Nope, Carol I'm sure there's a sucker born every minute. It's just that forum usage is WAY way way down. I agree with the earlier sentiments about the apps. I tested two years ago (admittedly that was an age ago) and found so many toxic plants in my garden misidentified, for instance hellebores were blackberries.

That's dangerous.

At least Hellebores don’t produce berries. A couple of years ago I intervened when I saw a woman gathering Privet berries. Her phone had told her they were Elder and she was planning to make a ’winter tonic’ for her child.

Yikes!

Know-it-all phone!

My Pokeweed is now around 12 feet tall. I strip off the leaves at the bottom and leave the canopy as a shade for seating in an area that would be exposed sun. If they were not so toxic I would install a few more of them.

Fun fact. Mockingbirds love ripe poke berries. Ripe poke berries intoxicate mockingbirds. Intoxicated mockingbirds attack the mirrors on your car...depositing intoxicating poke berries on your car.

Can someone suggest other plants with a similar habit to Pokeweed, but that would not be toxic? I am trying to create a 10+ ft canopy that only appears during the Summer months. Pokeweed dies on top and can be cut to the ground, and always puts up new 12-foot stems each year, so it's ideal in size and behavior. It's just too toxic to keep close to people.

I think a lot of people fear pokeweed's toxicity because many people describe pokeweed's toxicity using a lot of hyperbole to scare people. Hmm who could that be?

Animals eat the berries and Ive eaten the berries with no ill effects, and they're not very tasty, so it's doubtful a person will continue eating them once they taste them. I will still look for a less toxic alternative. I dont always throw caution to the wind, I mean I would never eat White Snakeroot or Poison Hemlock or Water Hemlock. Recently I nibbled on the fresh green stem of a Canada Elderberry and then read later that it was toxic, but it tasted realy good, like asparagus. I did have a mildly unpleasant reaction. The deer were eating my elderberries, so I figured it was safe.

Are you sure your plant as been identified correctly? 12' is overly large for Phytolacca........typically, they only reach 6-8 feet under ideal growing conditions.

As to toxicity, it is no more toxic than many other common garden plants. Many berry producing plants are toxic - hollies, yews, privet, nandina, laurel - not to mention scores of other popular garden plants including a fair number of vegetables and fruits (if you eat the wrong parts). More garden plants are toxic than those that are not!

Very few other plants possess that ability to grow to height in a single season. Elderberry (Sambucus) is a possibility however they are toxic as well.

Just deadhead the flowers before any berries form and you will have reduced the toxicity (and appeal) by nearly 100%.

ETA: birds and other wildlife will often eat plants that are considered toxic with no ill effects. I would never evaluate the safety of consuming a plant based on that!!!

I saw the maximum height listed as 10 ft. on a few different sites. Ive seen very large Pokeweed specimens at the tall grass prairie, and they were more wide than tall. I'd estimate they were between 8 to 10 ft. I could go out there again and measure?

Pokeweed is an eastern species that's considered invasive in some parts of the west. 2 alternatives to look at are Toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia and Blue Elderberry, Sambucus cerulea.

Thank you GG, for talking some common sense. I got a giant double-stem 9 footer beside the house that's watered by a gutter drain so gets as big as it can -- they "branch" outward eventually after reaching a certain height. A heavy rainstorm can often soak them and knock them down. The wild European lettuce in my unmowed areas can get much taller.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) You can see the photos of my plant just a bit earlier in this thread. It seems to be a very clear match to the species. I just went out and did a formal height measurement, and it is just over 10 feet.