Never Be Fooled By Poison Ivy Again

greetings everyone i'm adam harrington and this entire video is dedicated to this plant right here this is poison ivy and many people are familiar with poison ivy or so they think they are many of us know that poison ivy has leaflets of three and then it often grows up the trunk of a tree is a thick hairy vine when poison ivy looks like this it's really not that difficult to avoid coming into physical contact with this plant if that's your goal but poison ivy doesn't always look like this sometimes it looks like this or this or this or this or this or this sometimes poison ivy can look like other plants many of which grow side by side if you're someone who is susceptible to breaking out in rashes and blisters after coming into physical contact with this plant one of the best things that you can do is learn learn to identify learn to recognize and learn to see poison ivy in every season so that you're never fooled by poison ivy again you won't have to deal with rashes and blisters if you can avoid coming into physical contact with this plant in the first place and to do that you gotta learn so let's learn and let's start in the early spring season when the leaves are just starting to appear i live in western pennsylvania these leaves start to appear during the morel season so usually during the first few weeks of april what i'm showing you now is poison ivy arising from the ground so these leaves are attached to woody stems that are rooted in the soil keep this in mind poison ivy doesn't always grow as a woody vine but poison ivy is always a woody plant so you will see the leaves attached to something woody now i admit even though i know how to identify poison ivy if i come into physical contact with the plant this is the stage when it happens and it's almost always because i'm photographing or filming morels or some other spring mushrooms i'm usually clearing out some debris from the surrounding area so i'm pulling away sticks and leaves and rocks and inadvertently i push aside or pull out poison ivy so these compound leaves are made up of three leaflets and notice that many but not all have a reddish coloration to them so maybe you've heard red leaflets in the spring it's a dangerous thing well yes poison ivy often has red leaflets in the spring but several other plants do as well and they're not particularly dangerous also poison ivy isn't dangerous unless you handle it and even then not everyone develops rashes and blisters also notice that the leaflets are typically glossy and because the leaflets are small it's easy for anyone to overlook poison ivy at this stage especially when it's coming up from the soil so if you're landscaping your yard you're pulling out some things or you're trying to capture a beautiful photograph of spring mushrooms pay attention because there may be a few inconspicuous woody plants in the mix that look like this now as the spring season develops this is what poison ivy looks like specifically in its vine form so we see that there are compound leaves made up of three leaflets so this cluster of three leaflets is actually one leaf so the compound leaves made up of three leaflets and these leaves are alternately arranged on the stems so maybe you've heard some catchy phrases like leaflets of three let it be or one two three don't touch me it helps you remember poison ivy go for it but also keep in mind that there are lots and lots of other plants that have leaflets of three many of which i don't really mind touching now when we look at these leaflets we see that they're approximately two to four inches long and they can be about two and a half inches wide the margins of the leaflets can be smooth but more often they're toothed or load so maybe you've heard side leaflets like mittens will itch like the dickens well that's an interesting phrase but also keep in mind that the terminal leaflet can also have teeth it can also have lobes and you won't always see lobes or teeth on those side leaflets and many of these leaflets are glossy but not all of them are glossy so that glossiness ranges depending on which leaf you're actually looking at another catchy phrase that people use for poison ivy is longer middle stem beware of them and they use this phrase because whenever you look at the stock that leads to the terminal leaflet and that stock is botanically known as a petiole yule it's longer than the stalks or the petioles that are leading to the side leaflets and perhaps one of the most distinctive features of poison ivy is its ability to form these really thick hairy vines and these hairs that you can see on these vines are actually adventitious rootlets that cling to tree bark or walls or fences and the vines can be thin you can see some thinner ones right here or they can be pretty thick right here they could be even much thicker than that and so maybe you've heard a couple catchy phrases like raggy rope don't be a dope or if it's got hair it won't be fair i wouldn't really consider poison ivy not fair i mean as long as you don't touch it it's fine and even then that's just what poison ivy does so fair not fair i don't really use his words to describe poison ivy maybe you've heard harry vine no friend of mine again i wouldn't really say poison ivy is not a friend i mean just because something can cause harm doesn't mean that it's not a friend think of copperhead snakes or timber rattlesnakes i would never consider them to be enemies or not friends just because they have the potential to harm if you don't know how to handle them and i'd probably even say the same thing about ticks i wouldn't really consider that to be a not friend or an enemy but perhaps that's a topic for a different video anyway moving along with the identification features right now i can see that there are flowering buds just starting to appear on this poison ivy plant and these flowering buds will eventually give rise to flowers and the flowering stage of poison ivy is one that many people don't see and poison ivy produces beautiful flowers that are visited by insect pollinators and by insect maters these flowering clusters are around four inches long but each flower within the cluster is only about a quarter of an inch in length and these flowers will last for a few weeks here in western pennsylvania they bloom from late may through june and through the summer months this is what poison ivy looks like and many times it looks a little more beat up than it did during the spring season and during the summer months the fruits are developing so if you look closely in between and under the leaves you'll see fruits that are initially green and they'll eventually turn white later in the year in the autumn season this is where poison ivy really takes center stage and among all plants in eastern north america poison ivy is one of the most ornamental because of its autumn foliage also if you look closely at some of these vines you'll see the ripening fruits which were green during the summer months but are now starting to develop their creamy whitish color now in the autumn months you'll also see a resurgence of some ground-dwelling poison ivy and at this stage it looks a lot like it did back in the spring season with its fresh greenish reddish oily leaves and poison ivy is a perennial plant so it persists throughout the winter season and there are plenty of features available to help us notice and to identify it so the white fruits that matured in the fall will persist all winter and i've seen them persist up until the spring season now maybe you've heard berries of white run in fright or berries of white danger in sight well i wouldn't really recommend running in fright i mean maintain some composure here it's just poison ivy acknowledge it and just continue on with your walk maybe you've also heard berries of white best take flight well the only flight that's applicable in this situation would be the flight of birds because many times you'll see birds snacking on the fruits especially later in the winter season when fewer fruits are available another feature available to help us identify poison ivy in the winter is its winter bud these buds are pointed they're tannish yellowish brown they're naked so they don't contain any scales and the buds are hairy all living poison ivy plants will have these buds all winter long so here's an overview here's what poison ivy looks like in every season and keep in mind that poison ivy is toxic in every season every part of the plant contains an oil known as urushiol now the rashes and blisters that people experience aren't directly caused by urushiol they're actually caused by the body's own immune system mounting a defensive attack initiated by the presence of urushiol on and in the body and not everyone is susceptible to this reaction experts apparently crunched some numbers somewhere and found that 15 of humans do not experience any reaction whatsoever now many people would admit life would be a lot easier if nothing looked like poison ivy because we would always be able to identify it and not confuse it for anything else well to tell you the truth nothing looks exactly like poison ivy nothing except poison ivy and his close relatives have all or most of those features that we just covered but there could be a few plants that could be confused for poison ivy especially at first glance and one of the big ones is virginia creeper this is a plant in the grape family that does a lot of things that poison ivy does it grows close to the ground and it grows as a vine the biggest difference is that virginia creeper has five leaflets and not three so if you see a plant that looks like poison ivy but it has five leaflets consider virginia creeper as a potential id and as a member of the grape family the purplish black fruits of virginia creeper look more like grapes than they do like poison ivy fruits various bramble species can be confused for poison ivy like this wild black raspberry right here this particular species usually has three leaflets occasionally five but notice that the leaves aren't oily also notice that there are prickles on the stems in that the underside of the leaves at least of wild black raspberry are white or silvery and slightly hairy american hog peanut is a vining annual in the legume family with compound leaves divided into three leaflets but american hog peanut doesn't have glossy leaves and its aerial fruits are leguminous pods rather than fleshy berry-like droops the early compound leaves of wild sarsaparilla can look like the leaves of poison ivy because of their color and sheen but at this stage if you look closely nearer to the ground you will see the unique flowering structures produced by wild sarsaparilla which are never seen in poison ivy plants box elder can look like poison ivy with its compound leaves but box elder is a member of the maple genus which means that its leaves are oppositely arranged rather than alternately arranged also box elder is a tree so if you follow these compound leaves to their source and you see that they're directly coming out of a tree and not out of a vine then you know it's box elder now of course there are a few more plants that could be confused for poison ivy especially at first glance but hopefully by now you have a good understanding of what makes poison ivy poison ivy it's nothing to run from it's nothing to fear it's not unfair it's not an enemy it's a plant not a government organization it's a plant with a remarkable ability to make humans stop in their tracks to think and to decide how best to proceed that's pretty special not many things do that for us anymore and i think something important was lost when those things were lost but poison ivy is still here it's still around it could still do that for us and at the very least that's a decent reason to be grateful for it so three cheers for saint poison ivy thanks so much for watching this video i truly appreciate it i encourage you to subscribe to the youtube channel you can also head on over to learnyourland.com sign up for the email newsletter and if you are on social media feel free to give learn your land a follow on instagram and facebook thanks again for watching and i'll see you on the next video [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 613,219

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Id: Uo3522rUR3o

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021