ABSTRACT
Pokeweed grows as a native plant from southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick in Canada to Minnesota and south to Florida, Texas, and northeastern Mexico. It has been introduced elsewhere and now grows as a weed in most of the United States, as well as in Europe and Africa. This species is common in rich, moist soil along fence rows, railroads, and roadsides, and in fields, waste ground, disturbed sites, open woods, pastures, prairies, and uncultivated land. Pokeweed is a foul-smelling perennial, bushy herb, often resembling a small tree. Pokeweed is a wild (undomesticated) poisonous plant, and some people are known to have died from eating it. The root is the most poisonous part of the plant and occasionally has been known to kill pigs that dig up the roots and eat them.
