American pokeweed

Phytolacca americana, also known as American pokeweed, pokeweed, polk salad, poke sallet, pokeberry, dragonberries, pigeonberry weed, and inkberry, is a poisonous, herbaceous, perennial plant in the pokeweed family Phytolaccaceae. This pokeweed grows 1 to 3 metres (4 to 10 ft). It has simple leaves on green to red or purplish stems and a large, white taproot. The flowers are green to white, followed by berries, which ripen through red to purple to almost black and are a food source for songbirds such as gray catbird, northern mockingbird, northern cardinal, and brown thrasher, as well as other birds and some small nonavian animals (i.e., for species that are unaffected by its mammalian toxins).

Pokeweed is native to eastern North America, the Midwest, and the South, with more scattered populations in the Far West, where it was introduced. It is also naturalized in parts of Europe and Asia. It is considered a pest species by farmers. Pokeweed is poisonous to humans, dogs, and livestock.

Read more on Wikipedia · Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0