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Website design By BotEap.comPhytolacca Americana
Website design By BotEap.comPhytolaccaceae (berry family)
Website design By BotEap.comThis powerful medicinal plant has a battery of regional names: pokeweed, scoke, poocan, garget, pigeon berry, pigeon blood, poke-salat, cancer root, and cancer jalapa. His Latin name,
Phytolaccarefers to the family to which it belongs:
phytowhich means plant, and
lakewhich means a crimson tint;
american speaks for itself, identifying the species as native. This widely distributed perennial grows from Maine to Florida and Mexico, and throughout the West except the Dakotas.
Website design By BotEap.comMature plants, with multiple branching and ruby-red stems and stems in late summer, can grow up to ten feet tall. Before, small flowers appear in long whorls, often curved or drooping. Each small, petal-like, greenish-white sepal ripens into a fleshy purple-black berry. Songbirds prefer the dark purple ripe berries and excrete the fertile black seeds indiscriminately, thus ensuring a wide distribution of this amazing herb. After the killing frosts arrive, it dies back on the ground.
Website design By BotEap.comThe Poke genus encompasses some twenty-five species of coarse herbs, shrubs, and tree-like perennials native to the tropics and warm regions. The Brazilian species
Phytolacca dioica, is an evergreen tree that can grow up to twenty meters high and develop a thick trunk. Two East Asian species,
P. acinosa and
P.esculenta, are grown as ornamentals and potherbs. American poke is one of our hardiest and most durable herbs, with many historical and contemporary uses.
Website design By BotEap.comTraditional uses:
Website design By BotEap.comThe American Indians made use of all plant parts in their specific seasons of optimum strength. Throughout the winter, even year-round, the taproots, often huge, fresh or dried, were pounded and poultices applied to wounds, tumors, bruises, rheumatic swellings, and sore sinuses. Poke root was vital in many cancer and diabetes remedies.
Website design By BotEap.comPoke Root tea is used to treat rheumatism, arthritis and other joint diseases; the warm tea was useful as a skin wash to treat bruises, swelling, and sprains. Many believed that this spring tonic was also a powerful preventative medicine.
Website design By BotEap.comThe tender spring shoots of the American poke provided delicious asparagus-like vegetables for our ancestors, and still do for us. When they are only six inches tall, they are easily collected and managed as a potherb. The cooking water must be boiled and poured at least once to dispose of the dark and bitter elements.
Website design By BotEap.comThe plant’s simple, ovate, alternate leaves exude bright green ink when crushed or rubbed. The crushed berries produce one of nature’s brightest magenta colors. Exciting ranges of inks and dyes come from some of the poke species, but unfortunately they are not sunfast. Unless heavily tinted, the colors will fade.
Website design By BotEap.comModern uses:
Website design By BotEap.comContemporary herbalists view poke with respect and caution. A poke root tincture is used as a blood cleanser in very small amounts and is also taken to relieve lymphatic congestion and swollen lymph nodes. American pokeweed contains numerous alkaloids and complex chemical compounds, some of which are quite harmful to human systems. A pokeweed mitogen is being studied in antitumor immunity research as it appears to stimulate cell transformation. Poke root is used in several herbal cancer remedies, including essiac and florence.
Website design By BotEap.comDeposits:
Website design By BotEap.comThe entire plant is toxic. Never use it during pregnancy. The juice of the pokeweed plant can cause dermatitis in very sensitive people.
Website design By BotEap.comGrowth and Propagation Needs:
Website design By BotEap.comPoke grows easily from seeds and root cuttings. The main effort needed is to keep this plant under control in the garden, where it will grow as a bush, six to ten feet tall from mature roots.
Website design By BotEap.comCompanions:
Website design By BotEap.comPoke grows well with just about anything, especially yarrow and strawberry. It seems to improve the growth of pumpkins.
Website design By BotEap.comTake the pokeweed berries, or cokum, squeeze their juice, add it to the same amount of cream and cook over low heat until it has the consistency of an ointment. If used in the early stages of the disease [cancer], is some safe and easy cure. It should be rubbed every six to eight hours until it has an effect. – John Williams, a “Celebrated Indian Physician”, in his 1828 book New and Valuable Prescriptions for the Cure of Many Diseases
Website design By BotEap.comFor sprains and bruises, a poke root was boiled and crushed applied as a poultice. – David Williams, Oneida Herbalist, Oneidatown, 1912
