Across the pond, the Royal Horticulture Society recommends the perennial Phytolacca americana as an ornamental addition to the cottage or informal garden. With an upright form, red-purple stems, drooping racemes of flowers that transition in color from white to green to purple as they mature into fruits, and the ability to grow to 10 or more feet in height with a trunk as thick as a sapling’s, it could even be considered a specimen planting.Here, though, where the plant is native, it’s just pokeweed. Poisonous to humans both by contact and ingestion, and quick to spread by seed, most (be-gloved) gardeners would rather yank it on sight than ponder its virtues. But it has plenty: songbirds find it delicious, native bees overwinter in the stems, and creatures like the spectacular giant leopard moth can use the leaves for its larvae.
