Information about poison ivy, oak, sumac and the skin rashes they cause
There is a great deal of confusion about poison ivy vs. poison oak, since there are two kinds of poison ivy and two kinds of poison oak. Learn more.
We also have great products to keep you safe from all 5 of these nasty plants.
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It has been an absolute rule for over a century: "Leaves of three, let them be."
Poison ivy has only three leaves (actually leaflets) in a group. And that is still true about 99.9999% of the time.
As spring rolls around, poison ivy is one of the first plants to emerge. Spring leaves are usually red, but many new leaves are red, so that's not enough to go on. See our ALWAYS-NEVER criteria for deciding if a plant is poison ivy.
When you cut down a tree, the sudden presence of sunlight encourages poison ivy vines to grow into the gap.
Here is a stump where the white snow highlights how the vines, with nowhere to climb, start reaching in all directions, looking for something else to climb up.
I had appeared on local media, talking about my favorite topic: poison ivy. After the show, a fellow contacted me to tell me about an abandoned barn in New Hampshire that he said I had to see.
