eileen
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: Mystery plant. |
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A friend sent me this piccie and I was wondering if anyone knows what her plant is as I haven't got a clue?!!
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glendann
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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I think it may be a Beauty Berry Bush.What we call Spanish Mulberry Eileen.If so people plant them where they can see the birds come to it.Birds love the berries and it makes the berries in the fall.
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glendann
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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The leaves on the elderberry is different Sharon and the berries are not clusterd.
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zuzu's petals
Silly Old Bat
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Location: Coastal N.Carolina ~zone 8~ (Map)
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Eileen ~ Great looking plant, isn't it?
That is Phytolacca americana ("American Pokeweed" or "American Nightshade").
Clickety Click 
| Quoting from the Wikipedia site, which wrote: | | ... parts of this plant are highly toxic to livestock and humans, and (it) is considered a major pest plant by farmers. |
Birds do eat the berries,  and distribute them,
thus causing headaches for farmers in the U.S.
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Last edited by zuzu's petals on Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:46 pm; edited 2 times in total
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toni
Mistress of Garden Junque
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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I thought it looked like Pokeweed, but I knew Zuzu would know for sure
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glendann
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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It may be polk weed.The ones here berries are not that clustered.
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eileen
Moderator & Resident Taxonomist
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks all!! 
Zuzu you've done it again  that's it!!! I'll pass the name on to my friend. Who needs plant books when they have you?!! 
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dirt2diamonds
Showing Great Promise
Joined: 31 Oct 2007
Location: Mississippi
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| Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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It is definitely Polk Weed or as they say in my part of the south "Polk Salad" why, I don't know. And the bad thing about it is that before it goes to seed, some of my family members fry it with oil and a egg and love it. As a youngster, my cousins and I would gather the berries and use it to dye stuff and I mean it was a lasting dye. our fingers would be stained for days.
It is poisonous and grows as a weed in my neck of the woods and I don't mess with the stuff at all. I get my husband to cut it down where it pops up in my backyard.
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toni
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| dirt2diamonds wrote: | | It is definitely Polk Weed or as they say in my part of the south "Polk Salad" why, I don't know. |
D2D,
The name is Poke Salat. Salat is German for salad, the German immigrants who settled in the Ozarks used Pokeweed leaves as salad greens and called it Poke Salat.
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"Blossom by blossom the spring begins."
Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909)
"A little Madness in the spring, is wholesome even for the King."
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
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glendann
Official Garden Angel
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Just don't eat the roots  Night shade.Poison.
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dirt2diamonds
Showing Great Promise
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Location: Mississippi
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 3:56 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for that info Toni. You know that I am a black lady in Mississippi and I find it odd that my area have a lot of Ozark superstition and folk lore. I had gotten a book from about 1936 about some Ozark sayings and my grandmother had told us a lot of them as what we accounted as old wives tales. Polk Salat, is so unusual but, it must be exactly what my grandma was calling it.
I am intrigued.
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