Answers to Go with Susan Smith

Q. My mother gathered and cooked pokeweed greens. I think there may be some growing wild near my house. Can you help me identify pokeweed?

A . I used “edible wild plants” to search our catalog and found that pokeweed was listed in the index of most of these books.

It is easiest to identify pokeweed at this time of year, but the edible tender new leaves are harvested and eaten only in the early spring. Let me repeat, no part of the plant is edible in the late spring, summer, or fall. However, this is a good time to find and note the location of pokeweed plants.