Information about poison ivy, oak, sumac and the skin rashes they cause
There are two reasons that it is hard to know that THIS IS POISON IVY!
1. This is a not-so-common form of poison ivy: it is growing almost as a shrub, sending vines branches in all directions, looking for either sun or something to climb upon.
Here is a fence around a yard where the poison ivy has gone bonkers and is having an autumn party.
Couple of things to note here:
1. The poiison ivy had been cut back to the level of the hedge during the summer but came roaring back.
On the left is a pretty example of Virginia creeper in the fall.
On the right is poison ivy.
In spite of how different they look, Virginia creeper is the number one plant that gets confused with poison ivy.
Here are the two clear ways to tell them apart:
Another example of poison ivy revealing itself in fall.
When poison ivy climbs a tree, it often sends out long horizontal branches that can be mistaken for the tree itself. But because poison ivy often turns color before the host tree, it is suddenly revealed, as in this case.
There are a few things to take note of in this photo:
1. All the green leaves and berries close to the camera ARE poison ivy.
2. All the bright red leaves closer to the road ARE ALSO poison ivy.
Poison ivy lives on nearly every roadside in the eastern part of the United States.
It loves the sunlight it finds there, and birds drop the seeds there when they hang out on the wires overhead.
Poison ivy is one of the most enthusiastic participants in the fall foliage extravaganza.
Poison ivy often starts turning early, and can have truly lovely fall color, featuring red, orange, and yellow, sometimes mingling on a single leaf.
There are a few things to learn from this photo of your poison-ivy-nerd webmaster pointing at a poison ivy leaf as big as his head:
The leaves can get very big, typically in darker areas where they need to gather more light.
Here are three trees between a road and field. All three are covered with vigorous growths of poison ivy.
In fact, each of these could likely be stripped just by cutting the vines near the ground and just yanking the vines off the trees.
This image illustrates two points:
1. It is very common to find poison ivy growing in well-tended suburban condominium developments.
2. The plant will climb when it can, but also grows as a ground cover. (Also as a shrub, at times.)
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