Phytolaccaceae

A small family of herbs, shrubs and small trees concentrated in tropical and subtropical America, with soft stems, simple alternate leaves, and racemes of small flowers followed by fleshy, deeply pigmented berries. Its medicinal member here is poke root (Phytolacca americana), used in Western practice as a strong lymphatic in very small doses.

The family’s chemistry explains both the reputation and the danger. Triterpenoid saponins — the phytolaccosides — irritate mucous membranes and account for the violent vomiting and diarrhoea that follow a modest dose. Alongside them sit mitogenic lectins, proteins that provoke lymphocyte proliferation; pokeweed mitogen is a standard laboratory reagent for exactly that reason, and it is the most plausible link between the plant and its traditional use for swollen glands.