How to identify Poison Ivy.

hey there everybody craig hoddle director of nature blind school you'll often hear people say leaves of three stay away from me as it relates to poison ivy so what i wanted to do in this video is show you several plants that have leaves of three that are not problematic at all as well as take a real good close look at poison ivy and how to identify it let's get on the trail the first one we have here is what is scientifically referred to as anemone virginiana commonly referred to as tall thimbleweed this actually is a flowering plant it's a beautiful flower it'll come out a little bit later as we're looking at it now at the beginning of june you'll notice these indents right here which are called sinuses if you will on most leaf structures vanation starts at the base of the leaf itself and comes out from the center stem but again we have three leaves but this is not poison ivy all right this next one is an actual tree it's a hickory tree let's go take a look at it so you have three leaves here but that's because this is not fully developed this is eventually getting ready to be a hickory tree there will eventually be five or seven here depending upon the species but right now it looks like complete three leaves and it's done notice that has a soft tooth edge all the way around the entire length of the margin and each of the leaves come together down here at this base hey here's another one that's fairly obvious that it's not poison ivy but i just want to point out that it does have leaves of three red clover here's the lisa three again on this particular red clover trifolium pretense is the scientific name one of the things that stands out to me is the discoloration inside the leaf itself the leaf structure but again notice how all of these leaves come down to basically the same starting point look down here and you can see another one that has the bloom attached to it as well again lisa 3 this is not poison ivy all right this next one is actually an interesting edible that we talk about in survival class on occasion i've always called it woods peanut i looked it up and it looks like it's american hog peanut and i'm gonna butcher this scientific name but i'm gonna give it to you anyway amphi amphicarpia bractita jennifer will have the actual spelling in the video but let's take a look at it as this comes up from the main stem the leaves on the left and the right are going to be you know a good inch down from the terminal leaf that is here at the very end of the stem notice that around the edge that there are no lobes or sinuses here and um they come out to a point here but again this is leaves of three but this is actually an edible not in this season i couldn't find any but uh if you look later in the season you'll find tiny little peanuts on the root system of this that are edible all right this next one you all is actually a woody stem tree that very often people send me pictures of them go is this a poison ivy tree and it's not let's take a real close look at it acer nagundo the box elder this is actually in the maple family and it has the characteristics that a lot of people think makes poison ivy it does have a red stem here two leaves on either side you'll notice that it has sinuses and lobes on the left side here sinuses and lobes on the right side here and then it has sinus and lobes basically on the central leaf as well on both sides which is very similar to poison ivy here's some things that are a little bit different number one it's a tree and the stem that this leaf is actually coming off of is a green stem plant and this is really indicative of what most your box elders look like and look at where the leaf stems come off they come off opposite of one another which is an indicator of one of the maple species also take a look at the stems right here at the base of the leaves on the side look at the stem there versus the stem here and we'll compare that when we look at poison ivy here in a moment i have one more that's a honorable mention sort of because it's mostly leaves a five but i'll show you something here this is partha census quincufolia i think something along those lines uh commonly known as virginia creeper it has five leaves one two three four and five you'll see five right here but on this same vine you'll see these leaves of three right here the interesting thing about virginia creeper is that for most people it is not something that will cause contact dermatitis like poison ivy does but for a lot of people it does so it's one of those plants that often gets mistaken for poison ivy even though it has five leaves but with that said i would avoid it under most circumstances until you know that it does not cause problems for your skin finally finally we are to the poison ivy toxic codendron radicans i believe is the scientific name some variation of it you can see the words up on your screen now poison ivy let's take a close look at it and we'll see how we can identify it again today i want to be clear we're just looking at the leaf structure we're not going to look at the vines i'm actually going to do another video on vines and how to notice the differences on that later classic poison ivy right here which i want to point out that a lot of times it's not classic so coming up from main stem you have this short portion that gets more robust red right where these leaves come together but along this stem right here it does have a reddish tint to it something to note though on the right and left leaves coming up from the main stem you'll notice that the leaf stem itself is incredibly short basically right at the primary stem and the patio of this particular leaf the terminal leaf is longer very similar to our box starter that we talked about earlier but this is a viney growth and not necessarily a tree okay so notice the venation here the venation is that the veins come up the center portion of the leaf and then they branch off either side from the center notice this too this is real common but this is going to change let's be clear on this you'll have on the right leaf you'll have basically a lobe and the small indentation sometimes referred to as a sinus on the right over here you'll have a low indentation on the left and then on the center you'll oftentimes have that on both sides you can see that a little bit right there you can see it really well right here on this one but if you look around in here enough you'll find some that don't match up with that very well at all like that doesn't have that on it at all on the right side so this is poison ivy something to avoid leesa 3 stay away from me but keep this in mind there's a lot of things out here i only showed like five what was it five four five things that have leaves a three that are not problematic at all so some things to look for look at the stem look at the length of the leaf stem itself look at the coloration look at the edge of the leaf itself what does the margin of the leaf look like is it sawtooth is it smooth does it have a lobe here does it have a lobe there these are all the things that you should start looking at on a micro level to be able to more specifically identify things that are harmful to you the reason i like showing this stuff is because you say leaves a three stay away from me somebody goes out and sees how many things are out here have leaves of three on them then they're afraid to go the outdoors teach them how to identify poison ivy specifically and they'll be more likely to get outside because we like to come on join in and learn together

Channel: Nature Reliance

Views: 23,241

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Id: i_l9DJGK6K8

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021