Information about poison ivy, oak, sumac and the skin rashes they cause
Along the Atlantic coast, particularly in Massachusetts, I have seen many places like this, where there is a mass of 50 to 100 feet of solid poison ivy along the beach. This was taken on Boston's North Shore, but both Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard have places like this.
I noticed a 50 foot cliff behind some dumpsters, in back of a building in Boston. I thought the very lush growth on the cliff looked familiar, and it was. This is a huge growth of poison ivy, all the way up the cliff.
Basically, poison ivy is a vine. It usually runs along the ground or climbs up trees and walls.
However, in some cases, it grows into a shrub, and this backyard monster is one of the nastiest we have seen: sent into us by a viewer wondering if this shrub could really be poison ivy.
I got an email today asking if poison ivy ever has flowers, which is a good question. It can have flowers, but they are so tiny that they are often missed. The photo shows the flowers and the berries that they turn into.
Now that spring has finally arrived, the poison ivy is going bonkers, growing fast up here in the north. Down south, it is already in full leaf, with flowers and berries not far behind.
Apologies for the super-grody photo, but this lady wants you to avoid what she has been going through!
If there is any possibility that you have been around poison ivy, DO NOT rub your eyes, or any other sensitive area of the body, or you could get a rash like this one.
A viewer from Tennessee sent in this photo. I have run into many people over the years that believe that poison ivy always has shiny leaves. And it usually does, but by no means always.
Those wacky folks who do the Fox cartoon series Bob's Burgers ran their cartoon kids through a field of poison ivy in a recent episode.
I just got an email from somebody who got a poison ivy rash in the exact same spot as last year, but this time without ever being out in the woods.
Some very smart and enterprising people have started a company to ELIMINATE poison ivy and related problems from your premises. This service is largely aimed at summer camps, but they can handle many different kinds of situations.
