FoI
Tropical Pokeweed
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Tropical Pokeweed
aturalized Photo: Prashant Awale
Common name: Tropical Pokeweed, Pokeweed, Red inkplant, scorpion tail, Southern pokeberry, Inkweed
Botanical name: Phytolacca octandra    Family: Phytolaccaceae (Pokeweed family)
Synonyms: Phytolacca icosandra

Inkweed is a branched perennial herbs 40-60 cm tall. Stems are often reddish and angular. Leaves are elliptic-lanceolate to narrowly elliptic or lanceshaped, 6-22 cm long, 1.7-7.5 cm wide, usually hairless. Leaf stalks are 1-3 cm long. Flowers are borne in 7-14 cm long racemes, on 0.5-2 cm long stalks. Flower stalks are tiny, 0.5-2 mm long. Bract are 2-2.5 mm long, Sepals are 5, white to sometimes dark pink, oblong to ovate, 2-3 mm long. Stamens are 8-10, in a single whorl. Ovary consists of 7-8 fused carpels. Berries are purple, 7-8-ribbed, 4-6 mm in diameter. Seeds are black, lenticular, smooth, 2 mm in diameter. Tropical Pokeweed is native to Tropical America, naturalized world-wide.

Identification credit: Prashant Awale
Photographed in Munnar, Kerala.
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