Please ID this Monster Plant
Can anyone help me identify this monster plant growing in my garden? When it first started growing, I thought it was a sunflower, since I planted a few seeds throughout my garden. Now, it’s clear that it isn’t. It is about four and a half feet tall with a thick branching stem, long smooth edged…
Can anyone help me identify this monster plant growing in my garden? When it first started growing, I thought it was a sunflower, since I planted a few seeds throughout my garden. Now, it’s clear that it isn’t. It is about four and a half feet tall with a thick branching stem, long smooth edged leaves and now these white 2″ long inflorescences. A weed? I’m pretty sure I didn’t plant it, but I throw a lot of different seeds in the ground every year.
Anybody know?
I’ve had this garden for five years and though I’ve had many weeds, I have never seen this plant before. The seeds must have come in on bird droppings. Well, I ripped them out and hope this is the last of it…
poke weed it will stain anything it comes oncontact. dig DEEP to get roots out …..OH yea you have one soon you will have a million.
So interesting, I googled this plant in images so I’d know what it looked like as my son grabs and eats leaves in the park, and found it has medicinal uses too. Not that anyone should necessarily keep it around if they have children or dogs.
“Pokeweed has long been used medicinally, primarily as a laxative. In some areas extracts were drunk as spring tonics. The juice of the fruit has been used as a treatment for hemorrhoids. The plant contains chemicals, called mitogens, which encourage cell division, or mitosis. This makes it a powerful immune system stimulant; however, mitogens can contribute to the development of cancer. The plant also contains antiviral and antifungal compounds which show promise for medicinal use.”
http://www.radfordpl.org/wildwood/today/Species_of_the_Week/SOW16_poke.htm
Thank you! It definitely looks like Pokeweed.
I’ll be hacking it down this evening, guilt-free.
Yeah, I cossetted one of those too but found out it was pokeweed.
I second the Pokeweed ID
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/poison/pokeweed-poisoning/overview.html
Hard to be sure from the photo, but it looks like pokeweed, or Phytolacca to me. Are the main stems a reddish purple?