Would you guess this vine is poison ivy?
Beware of hairy vines! "Leaves of three" may be MANY feet over your head!
Yes, that IS a huge vine. The hairy roots are the tip off here. Poison ivy can easily grow 15 feet high and higher with woody vines as thick as an arm. Or, as thick as my leg. I think this might be the original poison ivy vine in this area. It. Is. Massive.
I learned poison ivy vine identification the hard way. We had three huge vines, such as you see in the very top pic, growing up the side of our largest tree, a massive cottonwood, when we moved to our acre. The leaves were quite high up and very large, almost tropical looking they were so big. I have been familiar with poison ivy my entire life, having been covered head to toe in the rash more than once as a child but I never suspected those vines.
My husband was chopping the vines in an attempt to remove them from the tree, as they were choking it out. It was spring time (think sap coursing upwards) and I had no gloves on, but went to help him yank at the vines to see if we could pull them down. We could not. And within two days I was so covered with a rash I was nearly hospitalized as a result and lost a full week of work.
Note to Self: Always wear garden gloves.
I do wish we would have taken photos of my face as it really IS miraculous that I returned to normal. I knew I would since my sister had gone through a severe outbreak like this as a child but my husband had never seen anything like it. He confessed to me later that he was considering the possibility that he might be married to a horribly disfigured wife, but was determined to remain at my side, bless his sweet heart. (Sounds funny but, seriously, my face was unrecognizable even to me.)
ALL parts of the poison ivy plant are "poison", ALL year long. Even if the plant is dead!
I made it my mission then to learn everything about poison ivy (I can even recognize the roots now since I also caught in in November while planting daffodil bulbs). And since we have SO much in this area, all over the woods and lining the bike path almost continually, I want to make sure you know what you need also.
How to be an Awesome Dad Tip #1:
Learn to Recognize Poison Ivy Before You Take Your Kids on a Fun Hike!
What inspires me to share? Watching a dad march his kids through poison ivy to look at frogs, for one thing. I grew up in a wild area along a river. Most kids around here grow up with manicured yards and many of their parents did also. To a lot of people, these might just look like 'regular' weeds:
I was telling a good friend of mine about the dad with the kids in the middle of the stuff and how I had intervened and explained that they were in poison ivy and how to identify it and she said something the blew my mind:
"If they even knew what you meant by poison ivy!"
It never occurred to me that some kids might never even have heard of poison ivy before and might think 'poison' simply means you shouldn't eat it. (Deer love it, btw.) They would just walk away thinking they met a crazy person who had warned them about eating weeds. Until the next day when they and their parents learn a new phrase: "Calamine lotion."
The second thing that inspires me to share is that the bike trails, every creek and stream and pretty much every vacant lot along a street is rimmed with poison ivy. That means if you have a dog and they like to sniff (and of course it will), then, at some point, they WILL dive headlong into the stuff.
Don't worry, THEY won't catch it. But YOU might!
What makes poison ivy "poison?"
ALL parts of the plant (even DEAD plants and cut vines) have a greasy, invisible oil called urushiol. It's very sticky and can easily adhere to your dog's fur, or your garden tools, or your shoes, pants, or bike tires.
Sounds a bit intimidating, doesn't it? Don't let it be.
Urushiol is long-lasting sticky oil, but that doesn't mean poison ivy has magical powers.
Watch this video:
You will see Tecnu in the video. You can get it at any ordinary drug store, over near the calamine lotion. It is a solvent, and smells a little like turpentine. I've found it to be much more effective and a lot cheaper than Zanfel but having seen this video, I'm definitely going with a degreaser like Dawn in the future. (And, like this gentleman, I haven't had a major outbreak of poison ivy in 15 years and I'm in it all the time.)
What if you DO get it? I'd skip the messy calamine lotion in favor of Rhuli gel except that the legendary Rhuli Gel has gone through two iterations since I've needed it. First it was bought by Johnson & Johnson (Band-Aid Anti-Itch Gel) and then it was taken over by Benadryl as Anti-Itch Gel . They have a kid's version as well.
Simply must know more? For all things poison ivy, here is a great resource for you.
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