Information about poison ivy, oak, sumac and the skin rashes they cause
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.)
Driving along a suburban road here in Massachusetts, I noticed this nasty poison ivy infestation on a wooden fence.
Hog peanut is a vine that can be very difficult to tell apart from poison ivy, and they sometimes grow on the ground together.
Hog peanut does not climb as poison ivy does, so if you find a vine on a tree or house it can't be hog peanut (though it could be Virginia creeper).
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