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.
We saw this nice little shrub between a parking lot and the road. It is some sort of blue-green evergreen shrub, but with a big mess of poison ivy erupting out of the top.
Poison ivy most often grows in two forms: a ground vine and a climbing vine.
But it is easy to show that the ground vine will become a climbing vine when it runs into a vertical to climb, such as a wall or a tree.
I'll be honest. As a person somewhat obsessed with poison ivy, you would think I would always be able to spot it in any season, in any form of growth.
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.
