Greensboro Birds

The Declaration of Independence was written with ink made from pokeweed berries

Short answer: Lots of them, and, no, you shouldn’t! There’s a lot of recent chatter about pokeweed on both the Carolinas birding list and the bluebird listserv. Probably because the berries and plant stalks are turning vivid purple and fuchsia right about now. Birders are asking which birds, if any, eat the juicy berries of the pokeweed plant. Some are also asking if pokeweed is edible for humans. Before you run out to try a bite, read this post first!

Juvenile robin looking for ripe pokeweed berries

I let the pokeweed grow as it pleases in both my woods and garden. Why? Because I like its rich green and red coloring, the white blossoms that appear before the berries, and the birds that flock to eat the berries. The other morning I looked up from my computer and saw—on one pokeweed plant—a male Eastern bluebird, an adult and a juvenile robin (the one above, photographed through the window screen), and a mockingbird! They were all trying to grab ripe berries before the other birds could get them. Here’s a list of the birds I’ve seen recently eating poke berries:

• Northern mockingbird
• Gray catbird
• Brown thrashers (all the mimics love poke berries!)
• American robin
• Eastern bluebird
• Northern cardinal
• Blue jay
• Common grackle
• Tufted titmouse
• Carolina chickadee
• Carolina wren
• Scarlet tanager (saw this one last fall, actually)

Can people eat pokeweed? Well, if you ask the old-timers, they’ll say you can eat the young shoots in spring in “poke salet.” However! Old-timers eat a lot of stuff you probably don’t want to mess with, pokeweed being one of them. It is indeed poisonous to people and other mammals. The roots are especially dangerous. Here are the symptoms the National Institutes of Health says you can expect if you think you can beat the fates:

• Weakness
• Muscle spasms
• Convulsions
• Headache
• Slow or difficult breathing
• Stomach pain
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Rapid pulse
• Low blood pressure
• Heart block

Sounds awesome! People around here who do eat it go through a multistep boiling process before it’s safe to eat. Why bother? More important, why risk it? Be smart—leave the pokeweed for the birds!