Phytolacca acinosa

The plant that produces this distinctive seed head  is known as the Himalayan Pokeberry, Indian poke, Indian pokeweed and it comes from Himalaya to Indochina. This was at the Royal Botanic Garden today as I wandered through.

The rather unpleasant name, pokeweed, appears to come from the Algonquian 'poughkone' - sometimes anglicised as 'puccoon' - a generic North American word for a number of different dye-producing wild plants. In  Chinese medicine, pokeweed is known as chuíxù shānglù.

The berries are toxic to humans. The leaves and stems were eaten in the Southern Appalachians as 'poke sallet'. The greens had to be boiled three times to get rid of the toxins.