Poison Ivy

the poisonous part of poison ivy is a substance in the SAP known as Russia all it's a very oily resin that remains inside the leaves stems and the roots and doesn't leak out unless the plant is damaged or bruised so it's possible to touch an unblemished poison ivy plant and not have any type of reaction but just the slightest damage may be caused from walking through a patch of the plant or an insect making a tiny bite in the leaf can cause leakage and just the most minut amount can cause a reaction when Russia all or that oily resin comes in contact with your skin it usually takes about ten minutes before it penetrates deep enough to do any damage so if you're out weeding or outside and you think you've touched poison ivy you think you've got that oil on your skin go immediately and wash that area with lots of cold water and hopefully you'll be able to get that resin off of your skin one myth about poison ivy is the belief that you can get poison ivy just by being near the plants like maybe the poison is in the air or something like that well that's not true for one thing Arushi all of that poisonous oily resin is not present in poison ivy pollen so if you get poison ivy pollen on you you're not going to get poison ivy the only way that it can get into the air is if the plants are being burned and small plant fragments become airborne and those can contain a little bit of the oil so that can get on your skin and it can also be breathed in and the lungs inflamed so for that reason you should never never burn any poison ivy or poison oak plants a couple reasons I believe people think you can get it just by being near the plant are because poison ivy a lot of times is given to people or people get poison ivy by contact indirectly without them even knowing about it and also because it can take 12 to 24 hours before the symptoms show up for example a guy goes out to walk his dog he lets the dog off the leash to run free out of sight the dog runs through a patch of poison ivy it breaks some of the leaves get some of that oily resin on its skin the dog comes back to its owner the owner comes up pets the dog gets the oil on his hand he then checks his watch maybe scratches his arm touches his face or something like that then a day later he has no idea how he got poison ivy when the blisters and that redness starts to show up in all sorts of places but this happens quite a bit this indirect exposure it's there are instances where people have gotten exposure from contaminated garden tools that have been locked up in a garden shed for over three years the poisonous substance of Russia all can remain active on clothing for up to one year so it's a good idea to be careful and if you have any clothes garden tools gloves or boots that may be have some of that oil from poison ivy on them it's a good idea to make sure that you keep those clean our best defense against poison ivy is to be able to recognize it so we can avoid it and before I show you how to identify poison ivy and poison oak in Oklahoma I want to give you a short botany lesson on leaves it's important that we understand the difference between a simple leaf and a compound leaf right here we've got a few simple leaves and you can see that they're made up of a blade and the petiole or the little leaf stalk where this simple leaf is attached to the stem of the twig here you can usually find a little bud down there in that axis this is the axillary bud and if something were to happen to this leaf if it were to get eaten or stripped away that little bud could regrow a new leaf but again just to kind of show you a simple leaf made up of the blade the petiole axillary bud attached to the stem now compound leaf is a leaf made up of several leaflets right here this entire structure from the stem will just kind of flip it over on me there from the stem too to the end out here is one leaf this entire structure is one leaf these things are called leaflets the whole thing is one leaf we again have a petiole leading up from the stem up to that first little portion of leaflets there and then this structure is known as a Reyes RA CH is it's the structure that the leaflets are attached to now we can again find the bud down here where the leaf joins the stem that's the big difference between a leaflet and a leaf you can see that up here we know this is not stem because there are no little buds in the axis of these structures again these are leaflets not leaves one leaf on this plant right here right here we've got a pecan and again kind of the same thing we've got two weaves attached to the stem and you can see that very prominent axillary bud on the pecan here and this leaf again has several leaflets this is a compound leaf now we have other types of compound leaves with the Kentucky coffee tree here we've got a twice compound leaf again this whole thing is one leaf this whole structure all the way to the branch again you can see where there's a bud down in there all right above the leaf there so that tells us that that is the point where the leaf attaches to the stem and again all these are leaflets now being a twice compound leaf the Reyes is branched so we have two a branched rei'kas two sets of a Reyes and these little leaflets are attached to that so a compound leaf a different type of compound leaf like this Buckeye we've got here this is known as a paul maitla compound leaf sort of like the fingers attached to your palm you can see that the leaflets all attached at one point again this is a compound leaf and if we look we can see there is a bud back here at the union of the leaf and the stem well the reason I wanted to explain all this the difference between simple and compound leaves is because poison ivy and poison oak have a particular type of compound leaf and I've got a poison ivy twig right over here and I'll just show you what I mean again this is this is one leaf and it's known as a trifoliate compound leaf made up of three separate leaflets and the pattern the way you can identify poison ivy and poison oak is that these two lateral leaflets are attached close to the petiole here and then the terminal leaflet is perpendicular it's arranged perpendicular or nearly so to the two latter leaflets and there's that little section of a rakish that separates it it's sort of extended from the other two so when you're out hiking or gardening and you see these leaflets these three leaflets making up a trifoliate compound leaf and this little extended raker segment you'll know that it's most likely poison ivy and it's best to stay away and leave it alone leaflets three let it be poison ivy toxicodendron radicans is present over much of the eastern and Midwestern United States and it covers a good portion of Oklahoma the plants can grow as sparsely branched shrubs and like we've got with this one right here they can also grow as a shrub in a thicket they can grow as a ground cover so we're trailing along the ground and they also grow as vines up into trees they have lots of little adventitious or aerial roots that help them attach to a tree or some other support that they climb on it sort of makes them look like hairy ropes and those can get quite large those poison ivy vines and climb way up high into the trees the plants can be growing in the shade they can be growing out in Sun they can have pale green leaves they can have dark leaves and the size of the leaves also can vary quite a bit right here I've got a small poison ivy leaf and you just compare compare it to this one so there's quite a difference in size you can also see that there's quite a variation in the edge of the leaf you can see this one is entire it's not interrupted very much at all but then you look on the very same plant just down one leaf and look at the den tations or the low being on this leaflet and also up in this area so quite a bit of variation with poison ivy toxicodendron radicans if you look down inside here you can see some of the fruit those little berries of the plants that the birds like to eat and spread around to our Gardens they're green right now but they will turn white as they age we also have poison oak in Oklahoma toxicodendron pubescens it's range is southeastern United States and it kind of makes it part of that range into Oklahoma sort of covers the eastern half or a little bit more of the state right here I've got an example of poison oak toxicodendron pubescens it does have more pubescens on its leaves and on its petioles so it's a little bit fuzzy the plants are somewhat lobes sort of like an oak leaf that's how they got their names poison oak it's poison oak is not a type of oak at all or a plant that grows around oak it's very similar to poison ivy in fact sometimes they're extremely hard to tell apart but you can see a little bit more of that that larger lobing right here poison oak doesn't climb as a vine it's going to be a sparsely branched small shrub in the landscape or out in the wild areas now out in the western part of Oklahoma we have a different type of poison ivy it's known as rydberg's poison ivy it's very similar to poison oak another small shrub that doesn't climb sparsely branched not quite as fuzzy as poison oak is rydberg's poison ivy but all of these poison ivy poison oak rydberg's poison ivy they all contain Russia all so if you're allergic at all you're allergic to all of them so there's there's no way you can say you're allergic to poison ivy but you're not allergic to poison oak there they have the same chemical it's almost the same plant another good thing for us is that they all look a lot alike again they have that trifoliate compound leaf with that little extended terminal leaf or terminal break a segment like we've got right here on this poison oak I also want to point out that we do not have poison sumac in Oklahoma poisonous sumac is toxicodendron vernix it's range as eastern and southeastern United States doesn't make it into Oklahoma hasn't been reported from Oklahoma the sumacs that we have drawn here like this one like this smooth sumac is in the genus roots and all of our sumacs are not poisonous they're good sumacs so this is a nice sumac good good sumac yeah well you might think I've either lost my mind or just forgot to put my gloves on since I'm handling this plant but this is actually not poison ivy this is a plant that looks a lot like it this is boxelder it's a tree closely related to our maples but whit's young it looks all the world like poison ivy one of the big differences between boxelder and poison ivy is the arrangement of the leaves on the stem if you see right here there's a leaf coming out on this side of the stem and one on this side we refer to that as opposite arrangement now right down here on this poison oak the leaves are alternate on the stem it's sort of zigzag as you go up or go down they're not arranged where one is right on the other side of the stem again the boxelder has opposite leaves also on the boxelder as it gets a little bit older the leaflets will become more in number here's a little bit older stem here and you can see they're actually five leaflets on this leaf of the boxelder but again you see that opposite arrangement and that green stem on the boxelder plant that looks a lot like poison ivy another plant that is confused with poison ivy all the time is Virginia Creeper and I've got a sample of it right here it's a vine a climbing plant one of our native vines it has really showy red or red orange fall color but it is perfectly harmless it's not even in the same family Virginia Creeper is in the same family as our grapes the leaves of Virginia Creeper are palmately compound like I was talking about earlier or excuse me the yeah the leaves are palmately compound all the leaflets attached at one point and then we got this petiole leading down to the stem and again that bud down there where the leaf joins the stem but Virginia Creeper not poisonous is at all one of our really nice native vines a plan that I think looks the most like poison ivy is one of our sumacs this is fragrant sumac roof's aromatic ax and you can see it does have the trifoliate compound leaves the terminal leaf is not really separated by a little segment of reyes though it's sort of like they all three sort of attached at the same point and it's a shrub that's a little bit more branched than our poison oak and poison ivy it's a shrub ear or twig ear plant a lot more branching with our fragrant sumac poison ivy and poison oak can be controlled with a treatment of brush killer or some sort of herbicide containing two four d like we've got right here make sure you read the label to see if poison ivy is indeed listed on the label heed the other precautionary statements don't spray this stuff when it's windy and make sure you don't get it on any of your other plants now as I mentioned earlier a lot of poison ivy seedlings are introduced into our landscapes by birds there are over 50 species of birds that eat the fruit and then drop the seed along with a little bird fertilizer into our Gardens so one nifty way to take care of some of those little poison ivy or poison oak seedlings that pop up is with a plastic bag maybe a bread sack or something like that but just insert your hand into the bag get a little poison ivy seedling down here just using the bag to grip the plant and try to pull it out of the ground and once you get it up out of the ground just reverse the bag without coming in contact with in any of that foliage bag it up that way tie it up toss it in the garbage and you're rid of the problem so remember poison ivy and poison oak similar plants they can have varying forms can be found in the shade or out in the Sun look for that compound leaf arrangement of three leaflets two lateral ones and one extended terminal leaf segment and if you get it on your skin go wash immediately with cold water I hope you have poison ivy free something

Channel: OKGardeningClassics

Views: 357,036

Rating: 4.8638711 out of 5

Keywords: Osu, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Extension, Research, teaching, agriculture, Oklahoma gardening, steve owens, poison ivy, poison oak, sumac, urushiol, plant identification

Id: fFridcIbx2Q

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2013