Pokeweed in October

     Pokeweed is a native, perennial plant here in Pennsylvania and across much of the eastern United States.  And they are most beautiful in October when they decorate the habitats they grow in with their stems, berries and leaves.
     Pokeweeds sprout from their roots in May in sunny habitats, including rural roadsides, abandoned fields and meadows, woodland edges and hedgerows between fields.  They can be up to eight feet tall in a few months and bushy with several branch-like stems.  They produce tiny, white flowers on the ends of their stems, which, when pollinated by tiny insects, produce green berries.  Those berries grow and become deep-purple with red juice by the end of summer.
     By October, pokeweeds are their most beautiful of any other time of the year.  Each plant has red stems, bright red leaves and many clusters of dark berries protruding along drooping, red stems.  Their red leaves are particularly attractive when sunlight shines through them, making them glow. 
     In October, the beautiful poke plants rival the beauties of goldenrod and aster flowers, the pale-blue berries of tearthumb and red hips of rose bushes, and the warm colors of autumn leaves, all of which are in the same habitats as the pokeweeds.    
     Like all fruits, to nature, those of poke are meant only for reproduction.  Poke seeds develop inside pokeweed fruits until mature.  Northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, American robins, cedar waxwings, mourning doves and other kinds of medium-sized birds eat pokweed berries, digest their juicy pulp, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings as they travel across the countryside.  The next spring many poke shoots sprout where there had been none before.
     Mice, skunks, raccoons, foxes and other kinds of mammals also eat poke berries.  Many poke seeds pass through their digestive tracts, too, spreading the species across the landscape.
     During winter, pokeweed plants die, except for their seeds and roots.  But next May, there they are again, green and growing.
     This October, or succeeding ones, when traveling through farmland, watch for the beauties of pokeweeds, and the birds and mammals that consume their fruits.  Poke in its natural habitats in fall is just as lovely as colored foliage, flowers and berries.