Polk Salad here in Tennessee.
Grows everywhere and is still eaten by many folks here.
Thought this would work for the gardening ping list.
I’ve been eating fresh salads from my garden for the past two weeks, I love spring!!!!
A few years ago my dad (who grew up in South Carolina) and I were fishing the Illinois River and he looked over at the bank and said, "Hey, those are polk greens!" I had no idea what they were, and I thought he'd lost his marbles when he motored us over to the bank and started picking a bunch of them. We had them with dinner that night - which was good since we didn't catch any fish. I gotta say polk greens were fairly tasty.
“Polk Salad here in Tennessee.”
Looks like it is toxic if not prepared properly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokeweed
There was an excellent thread about poke salad a few years ago, with some recipes, and I wish that I could find it.
Recently I finally figured out why there always seems to be poke salad growing on old burn piles, debris piles, etc., and it is because birds are prone to sitting on these piles and apparently they also eat poke salad berries. (Everybody but me probably knew that)
Anyhoo, I have some poke salad growing in my goat pasture and I have been tempted to try some -- but what is holding me back is that the goats don't eat it. They will munch on just about anything they can reach, but they haven't touched the poke salad. Hmmmm ...