I would like to understand whether the fruits on this Phytolacca clavigera, from UBCBG will fill out to look like the fruits of Phytolacca americana (photo from Wikimedia, photographer Karduelis), or whether the different appearance is really a distinguishing feature. I mean, are those blackberry-looking things on P. clavigera several fruits that will become bigger perfectly round fruits, or do they already look like what they look like? I guess I could just wait to find out, and keep driving out to UBC to see what's going on with them, but I don't know if the birds are going to get them before I get there. I read on Wikipedia that for American pokeweed the juice can be absorbed through the skin, so contact with the plant should be avoided. I wonder if that's also the case with P. clavigera (also called P. polyandra).
They already look like what they look like. Some species of Phytolacca have carpels that are more or less free (i.e. not joined together to form a perfectly round fruit), while some species have the distinguishing feature of the basally connate carpels (e.g. P. americana). P. acinosa is a perfect example for the first group, P. polyandra has connate carpels but is somewhere in between in apperance, it will probably never look as perfectly round as P. americana would do. On the other hand, I'm not totally convinced that the plant in question is a true P. polyandra (and same goes for most images on the internet labelled as one). They just don't match the description, photography and illustration of Flora of China.
Well, if we're talking about the ID of the UBCBG plant, I've moved this to the Talk about UBC Botanical Garden forum. Thanks, Axel. I'm attaching some flower photos of what I think is the same plant from June, 2012, when I didn't find a tag, and May, 2013, which did have the same label as the one I attached. This year I found two labels, one with each name (clavigera and polyandra, though my photo does not show the whole label; I'm just assuming it doesn't say polyandra hybrid). It's in the same location; there is only one accession in my 3-year old database list and it's from 1992, in the database as Phytolacca hybrid. Maybe someone at UBCBG will say if it's not the same plant as was there three years ago. I did see the eFloras P. polyandra photos yesterday, and that's what made me wonder if these were going to keep swelling and end up looking like P. americana.
Hey Wendy, yes, this accession is listed as a hybrid, since 2010, when it was reassessed by a botanist. It was received as P. clavigera and changed to P. polyandra. Not sure how it is currently labelled.
I didn't exactly get this photo in focus, which is why I had the name slightly wrong when I originally posted it. But both names are there.
Thanks to Lee Perry for telling me where to find the plant named Phytolacca clavigera at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Here are some photos of it for comparison, though I'm not so sure about this ID considering the Flora of China description that Axel referenced. That gives height as 1.5m, leaf blade to 10.5cm, racemes erect. The accession date on this is 1997, and it's relatively huge - the "trunk" splits at about 1.5m and then the branches go on for another 1.5m. Some of the leaves are almost 30cm. The inflorescences/infructescences droop instead of standing upright.
