A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2007 pokeweed/pokeberry and Wild Helianthus/Sunflower

This was growing behind someone's house, near my mom's house. I thought it looked pretty nice, but not sure what it is? There's pretty sunflower looking plant above it, but that's in a separate photo. Oh, what the heck, I'll put both of them here..lol.

First, the berries-




Now, the sunflower/daisy looking flowers-




Meg

The plant with the berries is called Pokeweed. not sure about the other one.

Karen

the first one is pokeberry or poke salad, some people eat the leaves, pick them when they are young and clean and boil them.

the second one looks like a branching sun flower.

Yep, I agree with G~Mom, Pokeweed.
I know for sure the berries are poisonous though!!!


And the second one is Wild Helianthus/Sunflower
I like plant alot, we have alot of it up here.
Very hardy, but very tall, needs support!!!

Weezie

Thanks again! I was wondering if that was Pokeweed. I thought it was so pretty, and looked like clusters of grapes..lol. So glad I don't like to pick stuff & try it. <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" /> Cuz, I luv me some grapes.

The sunflowers were so pretty. Very tall, but smaller flower. They were kind of up against a fence, so that probably helped support them.

Meg

If we were living in the roaring twenties I could say - that's the berries!

Nice pictures.

I just took pictures of a pokeberry bush that I have in my yard. I was just about to post it when I saw this. So tell me, are they easy to pull out because I have a couple growing in my beds. I thought it was part of my grape vines earlier this summer and so I never pulled it. Its pretty big now, about 5 feet tall! Will it be easy to get rid of?

Hisgal,
Alot I would have to say would depend on your soil/dirt??? If it's nice and organic and loamy, should be relatively easy, also having moist soil helps too, when it's so dry, it only breaks off at the soil level..

What out for the berries dropping, that's how they'll grow again next year..

Check how much root system is in the ground too when you pull it!!

Weezie

This is just an interesting pokeweed fact. A neighbor who died recently was a gunsmith. He had been told by an old timer that the best reddish stain for wood was to simply squash pokeweed berries and use the liquid. He used only that, rather than commercial stains.

That IS an interesting fact - I guess before they made commercial stains, that's what folks did. Everything began somewhere.

Y'know, I wouldn't mind trying that. We have a wooden picnic table outside the window where I keep my table garden each year - every summer I swear I'm going to paint the thing. And every summer Jeff says 'Ah! Fer heaven's sake, what for?'

Most of the original paint has flaked off. It wouldn't take much to bare the thing - I'd love to do that with the red berries - there's plenty of them around, gawd knows.

And if it didn't work, well I could paint it. Then Jeff could say 'Fer heaven's sake!'