Talk:Phytolacca

Poke Salet

Canned

Poke Salet Greens are canned in our town of Siloam Springs, AR and are widely available. They are canned by the Allens Canning Company - the largest privately owned canning company in America.

For the Daily Value based on a 2000 calorie diet, a serving size of 1/2 cup provides: Vitamin A 180%, Vitamin C 60%, Calcium 8%, and Iron 6%.

The same Allens canning company produces the Popeye brand of Spinach. For the Daily Value based on a 2000 calorie diet, a serving size of 1/2 cup provides: Vitamin A 60%, Vitamin C 20%, Calcium 6%, and Iron 8%.

Fresh

Those of us in the Ozarks may pick our own Pokeweed from the wild plants in early April and May. As in gathering asparagus, it is best to use the tender new growth that may be up to 10 inches tall. It is imperative that this is to be boiled and the water drained twice to eliminate any toxicity. Never eat Pokeweed greens uncooked!

The rest of the year it is great to have canned Poke Salet available.

--Ozark1 20:10, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Poke Salet picture Pokeweed in fruit

The picture at the top of this article, entitled Pokeweed in fruit, is not Phytolacca americana

The correct picture for Phytolacca americana is currently at the bottom of the page with this discription: "This stalk contains ripe, purple berries as well as immature, green ones."

--Ozark1 20:10, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've swapped the pics to have the natural wild plant in the taxobox. The old box (now lower) photo is a garden cultivar selected for larger fruit - MPF 11:13, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The lower photo (with chimneys in background) appears to show a different species entirely, P. acinosa the Asiatic pokeweed. In England, where P. acinosa is sometimes grown in gardens, its often misidentified as American pokeweed. The photo on the wikipedia page "Phytolacca americana" also shows Asiatic pokeweed and not the real thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.101.142.226 (talk) 07:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

20 meters !?

I have never seen a 20 foot specimen, let alone 20 meters. Where is the source for the assertion of 1-20m?

dvs

Sources

I have a source for most of the facts on this page: http://www.cbif.gc.ca/pls/pp/ppack.info?p_psn=12&p_type=all&p_sci=sci&p_x=px Anyone care to add it?

Poke Sallet Festival

Yes, there is a celebration of this plant (specifically in its edible form) held anually in Harlan, Kentucky. Just thought I'd point that out; although it probably doesn't need to be in the page, it's still an interesting bit of information. Daisenji —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.28.240.165 (talk) 02:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Solar Power?

Is this the same berry who's ink can be used as a dye to increase the sensitivity of a dye-based solar cell? Zaphraud (talk) 13:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Add a link to Florabase and Pier

I added something from Florabase http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/2793 and I've got yet another that shows it is the pacific is as well. http://www.hear.org/pier/species/phytolacca_octandra.htm Would someone like to add it?58.96.114.192 (talk) 06:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)MS

Structure

I've recently been studying some P. Americana that I cut down in my back yard. I noticed the stalks have several very unusual characteristics. I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find a more detailed study on this plant. Perhaps I could provide some more detailed pictures to the P. Americana article. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 03:57, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Bird wording...

• "However, the berries are eaten by birds, which are not affected by the toxin because the small seeds with very hard outer shells remain intact in the digestive system and are eliminated whole."
  • While this is true, I question the obvious intentionalist stance of the comment. Birds don't digest the seeds and they are carriers for the seeds and spread them around so evolutionarily there's every reason why it would be counter productive for the plants to poison the birds and the birds not to be poisoned. But, it might need a bit of rejiggering. Birds are not affected and carry the seeds around. There's a perfectly fine ontological reason given by evolution, but I don't think it should be expressed like that. Without either explaining the link or making it seem like A causes B directly. Tat (talk) 05:02, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Pokeberries are transparent to Infrared light

Hi not sure how to make a good edit so I'llleave this here for the editors. Pokeberries are apparently transparent to infrared light and make good and fun photography experiments. Zach Stern has taken a few good creative commons 2.5 photos with an IR modified camera that would be suitable here. He has done several experiments with differentkinds of berries and quite alot of them have interesting IR properties when ripe. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachstern/2878204488/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.185.28.122 (talk) 10:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Misleading page title/content

The lead section of this article previously said that it was about "Pokeweed" in the sense of the whole genus Phytolacca. However, from all the sources given, the sections "Uses" and "Toxicity" were almost entirely about "Pokeweed" in the sense of the species Phytolacca americana, so they belong at that article, not here. I have reduced these section to a short summary related to this one species. I will leave the removed material at Talk:Phytolacca americana for the present. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:01, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Peter coxhead (talk) 16:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Why are you putting all that in the Phytolacca article... it is about Phytolacca Americana

I am not taking it out... but... wrong article.Unfriend13 (talk) 20:05, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Nice work sorting that all out, thanks JacquesDelaguerre (talk) 14:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Woops, forgot I said I wasn't taking it out... then I did. What happened was I read through the talk and looked at the other article and it was all copied there. I think your wording on the food use is better than what appears in the Phytolacca americana article, which is a ... mess. It needs way more help than I care enough to give at the moment, though I have left it on my list.Unfriend13 (talk) 20:33, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

List of improvements needed? I may dabble in that article also ... I grew up with pokeweed all around :) JacquesDelaguerre (talk) 21:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll put that over there on its talk. :)Unfriend13 (talk) 21:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Phytolacca/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

Press [show] to view →

This is a fairly good article. I would like to add that I find very young and small poke leaves perfectly edible in raw salads. Care should be taken with respect to size of the plant. The stems up to a diameter of around a half inch can be peeled and prepared in much the same way as asparagus except I use baking soda in the first cooking water and pour that off and rinse and pour all that out and reheat with plain water and a bit of salt. I have made quiches from the leaves by bringing chopped leaves from young plants to a boil with baking soda which also removes some oxalic acid and rinsing thoroughly and using fresh water to bring it to a boil only one time. I have written several recipes for poke and find it an excellent pot herb if properly prepared. I have been eating it perhaps forty times a year for the past fifty-plus years and find it a nice addition to the repertoire of spinach, collards, turnip greens, mustard and Kale. I formerly managed food laboratories both in government and industry and have done a fair amount of analysis on wild greens and found that poke was actually quite healthy if properly prepared. That caveat is necessary though. It is very much like picking wild mushrooms. One must be careful with any food. I am from the Ozarks too but some of my ancestors ate poke in North Carolina before European settlement. Wild foods can be quite good if one is careful and any sort of food, including domesticated potatoes with green skins can be toxic. Poke can be viewed as an alternative to some greens by the knowledgable as with dandelion greens and dandelion roots. Poke berries are quite toxic though to humans or fish and one old means of catching fish was to pick poke berries and crush them and place them in a small body of water. The fish aren't necessarily killed but do rise to the surface.These are all things I have learned from my family and through personal experience and wouldn't qualify as an addition to the body of the text. Petitjean1 (talk) 19:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)petitjean1

Last edited at 01:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC). Substituted at 02:55, 30 April 2016 (UTC)