October 5, 2009

I was out geocaching with a friend yesterday, trying to find a "puzzle cache." It involved going to a tank at a museum in Milford, and projecting where a bullet would land if fired from there at a certain angle and direction. Figuring this out was quite the challenge, but we think we did it correctly. We ended up in a community park about 6 miles away. While searching, I came across several plants with bright pink stems and blue berries. I did some searching on line when I got home and learned that it is Pokeweed, a poisonous plant. Pokeweed berries yield a red ink or dye, which was once used by aboriginal Americans to decorate their horses. The United States Declaration of Independence was written in fermented pokeberry juice (hence the common name 'inkberry'). Many letters written home during the American Civil War were written in pokeberry ink; the writing in these surviving letters appears brown. So I learned a few things today... how to project a waypoint, and lots of info about pokeweed!