This grows in the corner where my yard meets two neighboring lots and don’t think any of us know which property it’s actually on so it’s been allowed to grow huge. I know it gets a lot of flak, but I genuinely think it’s a pretty and interesting plant, aside from all of its benefits from wildlife.
by Suspicious_Note1392
38 Comments
You can dye things purple with the berries. My mom git in trouble for staining the dog house growing up.
I can take it or leave it but the catbirds ADORE it. Two winters ago we had a mockingbird take up residence during a polar vortex. Very valuable to birds!
in England people grow it on purpose as an exotic. it’s American cultural baggage that makes people decide it’s ugly. I love it, statuesque, those bright magenta stems, elegant flowers and berries, and of course the birds love it too. I always leave a couple in corners of the garden where there’s room.
I’ve got several volunteers and I intend to keep them, it’s SOOO pretty and it got big faster than any of the native shrubs I bought & planted this year lol
there’s a pokeweed plant easily 6 feet tall growing up through a drainage channel with an opening that’s like, 1/4” wide. the trunk of this plant is easily 1.5”+ in diameter. i just keep cutting off the flowers because i don’t want berries all over my patio, but i’m renting and i don’t mind the pokeweed being there! little bees seem to love it
I think it’s gorgeous. Just have to keep it out of accessible areas on account of the dogs.
I learned that the bright pink things are called peduncles and it seems like the flowers lack petals and basically just mature from white to magenta over the season
Yes, it’s so striking to look at! I have one that grew from seed this spring. I threw three different tiny mixes of pollinator- or flower-seeds in the same spot near the front door and this is by far the winner in size and color! (I think a coreopsis and something else also came up & survived, but they’re both much smaller.) I’m hoping the pokeweed can be moved in the fall, it’s way too large for that end of the garden, but maybe it can go be colorful in a back corner like yours.
I like it. It’s native, so I’m cool with it.
Sure it’s pretty 😍
Birds love em and the volunteers are easy to spot and pull. No issues with them.
I think it’s very pretty and I know it has a ton of wildlife value, but if I let all the seedlings in my property go, my front yard would be a pokeweed forest.
I blame this on the combination of deer pressure, rabbit pressure, and jumping worms. The deck is stacked against me and Pokeweed appears to be a survivor.
Sometimes I’m tempted to just … Let it grow and stop trying to get other things to establish. Especially since the asshole deer have started chomping on some of my supposedly deer resistant native plants. Blackberry, pokeweed, snakeroot, and sedges. That seems to be the natives I can grow without the deer ruining everything. Oh, and Goldenrod. Good ole Canada goldenrod.
Sorry. I’m cranky.
I do. It volunteers in my yard now and then and I leave it. Mine can get 4-5’ tall and require no water.
Love it! Unfortunately had to remove mine because I discovered it’s toxic to dogs.
Did a pokeweed write this post?
I let one grow in my garden for the birds. They went crazy for it. I also tried out using the berries for dye.
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I don’t let it inside my fenced yard because of its toxicity to kids and dogs, but I love it growing in the woodsy areas!
I saw someone on TikTok put a huge pokeweed in a glass vase and it looked so chic
I think it’s beautiful. It looks great, it feeds the birds, and it’s damn near impossible to kill… my only complaint is I hate how it looks once it’s died off. That and it pops up everywhere in my garden!
I let a few do their thing, but I also pull thousands of volunteers in the course of a summer. Kind of a menace.
I have some on the edge of my property that I let be. Completely defoliated right now which is pretty cool. It’s the host plant for the giant leopard moth which is gorgeous but I didn’t see the caterpillars to confirm what ate mine.
Me! I love it.
Use it to make paint pigment.
I love it! Odd little plant in its own weird family. Beautiful stature, stunning foliage. I actually prefer the look of the remanent flower stalk after the berries have been picked off.
I grow a couple varieties that have decorative foliage, a variegated one and a golden leaf one. I don’t love how hard the taproot is to get out, but what can you do.
We have it growing all over our yard. We have a forest of it where I took out a bunch of multiflora rose last year.
https://preview.redd.it/qcfdbekk1wjf1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=057338edea26f67f040681b4e449c47318c9340a
I have a couple huge plants that always come back, wife hates that I let the “weeds” take over part of the yard, she just doesn’t get it yet lol.
Why do some folks dislike it? Aggressive? I just became aware if it and letting it grow behind my house.
I love pokeweed so much! I’ve always thought it was beautiful, and I have such fond memories of making “potions” out of pokeberries with my friends when I was a kid. (We were never quite sure what to *do* with the potions, since we knew they weren’t safe to drink, but the bright purple juice sure looked magical in a bottle on the windowsill!) More recently I’ve started dyeing yarn with pokeberries, and the colors it produces are gorgeous. I’d consider it one of my best plant friends!
It’s beautiful!
I think it is a beautiful plant. In a yard 8 blocks away from my yard.
I do think it’s pretty.
That having been said, I’ll be doing all I can this fall to eradicate it from the little wild areas of my yard.
I actually love these plants
I pull it out where I don’t want it, and keep it where it doesn’t bother me and now I have a huge one by my hammock and it’s awesome there
I actually use the root (under the soil) … if you ever have too much and you wanna get rid of the roots, I’ll definitely buy a pound or two. I use it to make salve, and I’ve been having a very challenging time finding it.
I love it. In my N. Illinois garden it looks stunning. The foliage is so lush and tropical looking and sharply contrasted against the red stem.
It is also a critical food for the local cardinals who look like WW1 biplanes dodging around each other in blurs of red and tan. They get fat on their berries just before our long winter.
I love mine.
I love mypokeweed, the one I have now looks like a Tiffany stained glass lampshade.
Oh it’s beautiful. I love it in my yard as a native plant, but not too much of it.