Pokeweed in Morton Grove

Almost everything about pokeweed is big. It can grow to up to 10 feet high, its leaves can grow to be 10 inches long, and its blossoms are large--only the berries are tiny. There's a pokeweed plant in Morton Grove's Linne Woods that I noticed last month, I've photographed it three times since then. The first photograph is of the blossom, the second is of unripe berries, and the last and of course the most recent is of ripe pokeweed berries.

Those berries are an important food source for gray foxes, raccoons, opossums, and songbirds. And the animals help propagate the plant by spreading its seeds. But the berries are toxic to humans.

Have you ever heard of poke salad? After laboriously boiling the leaves to remove the toxins, southerners make salad, although some authorities advise against eating pokeweed leaves even after repeated boilings.

Still, pokeweed gave us, indirectly at least, one hit song, Tony Joe White's "Poke Salad Annie" in 1968.