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American pokeweed, salad green

Ron Smith, Editor

March 25, 2020

2 Min Read
dfp-larry-Steckel-pokeweed.jpg
American pokeweed at this stage is too mature for poke sallet.Larry Steckel

Spring has made a few overtures in northeast Tennessee over the past few days. The pear tree in the backyard shows signs of blooming. The maple next to it is trying to bud. Dandelions push their bright yellow flowers through the damp soil.

A pair of bluebirds is evaluating the acceptability of the birdhouse they or a similar pair found adequate last spring.

Songbirds seem to trill different tunes than they did just a few weeks back, mating calls, perhaps.

A few mornings still dawn over frosty landscapes; cold winds convince me to wear a sweatshirt when I go outside.

But I can feel spring. And it reminds me of picking poke.

My aunt Allie, a short, plump woman I saw only rarely when she and my Uncle Henry came to my grandparents for Sunday dinner, got a hankering for poke salad in early spring.

Poke salad, or poke sallet, as country folk called it, consisted of the tender new leaves of American pokeweed, an abundant plant in the South Carolina foothills where I grew up.

Left alone, pokeweed reaches heights of six feet or more and produces plump, dark berries that leave blood-red stains on fingers, clothes and anything else they get mashed into (my brother's head, for instance). Birds deposit a colorful palette of pokeberry abstract on automobiles, porches and laundry left hanging on the line. But I digress.

By the time pokeweed grows large enough to produce berries, it is way beyond the use before date for poke salad. Older leaves, too, I always heard, are toxic. Only the first leaves that emerge in early spring, my aunt Allie said, qualify as salad ingredients.

The reason I know that is that she hired me on occasion to search the woods around my grandparents' house to find tender pokeweed leaves. She offered to pay.

I set out with a grocery sack and high ambition. Opportunities to earn money by walking through the woods seldom came along in the 1950s.

It was harder than it sounded. Finding the newly emerged leaves mandated close attention to the terrain. Picking only the most tender shoots demanded focus and patience, traits uncommon for a pre-teen boy.

I do recall bringing Aunt Allie a sack full of poke leaves, however, for which she paid me a quarter, after making deductions for the leaves she determined too far past prime to be edible.

She culled without mercy. By the time she eliminated the overgrown poke leaves, the grocery sack held less than half of what I had meticulously harvested.

Did I mention that my aunt could pinch a penny until Lincoln shed tears? In hindsight, I should have negotiated harder, perhaps added a clause about minimal compensation.

Still, a quarter bought a hotdog and a Coke, not bad pay for a walk in the woods.

About the Author(s)

Ron Smith

Editor, Farm Progress

Ron Smith has spent more than 30 years covering Sunbelt agriculture. Ron began his career in agricultural journalism as an Experiment Station and Extension editor at Clemson University, where he earned a Masters Degree in English in 1975. He served as associate editor for Southeast Farm Press from 1978 through 1989. In 1990, Smith helped launch Southern Turf Management Magazine and served as editor. He also helped launch two other regional Turf and Landscape publications and launched and edited Florida Grove and Vegetable Management for the Farm Press Group. Within two years of launch, the turf magazines were well-respected, award-winning publications. Ron has received numerous awards for writing and photography in both agriculture and landscape journalism. He is past president of The Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association and was chosen as the first media representative to the University of Georgia College of Agriculture Advisory Board. He was named Communicator of the Year for the Metropolitan Atlanta Agricultural Communicators Association. Smith also worked in public relations, specializing in media relations for agricultural companies. Ron lives with his wife Pat in Denton, Texas. They have two grown children, Stacey and Nick, and two grandsons, Aaron and Hunter.

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