👀👀👀👀 Link to Tecnu Wipes and other gear and books we use at Backyard Ecology can be found here: www.backyardecology.net/recommendations/ 👀👀👀👀 🌿🌿🌿🌿 Learn more about poison ivy by checking out this playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PLYie5upT7CI0pqzmk-haf9ity-HJWd5A- 🌿🌿🌿🌿 This video is NOT sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something we'll receive a small commission.
Glad i finally learned how to tell box elder saplings from poision ivy (Box elders have branches opposite each other while poision ivy branches originate at alternate heights on stem) Also, thanks for stating that the itch oil is inside the plant. I probably won't break out just from brushing against its leaves
I was a forestry worker in Michigan in the early 80s. I had no problem with carefully removing PI from trees before measuring them. Years later I was cutting a trail behind my house in CA and cut through quite a lot of Poison Oak. I had a horrible rash on my arms and I know how careful I was being (very). Even if you think you are immune, from long experience, assume you are not.
It's the young Virginia Creeper that sometimes gives me a double take. For a while I started thinking that poison ivy was developing a morph with mostly five leaflets, just to fool me into getting a rash.
@@WilliamHollinger2019 There is a small percentage of people that do have a reaction to Virginia creeper. The rash it causes isn't as intense as poison ivy or as long lasting.
JINX! I get it standing within a hundred yards and taking a deep breath. As I recall from geology field camp, If you saw poison ivy, you were usually correct mapping the rock unit as a limestone.
@@StLouisBear I don't tramp much these days....the ticks with their diseases are EVERYWHERE here in the Southerntier of New York State. Glad that I have the memories!
Everyone is allergic to it to a different extent or not at all. My father used to let to pull it out with his hands, defying it to give him a rash lol. He never got poison ivy rash. And others just have to look at it when they get a rash almost. Virginia creeper I’ve never heard of that actually giving somebody a rash. They say it’s poisonous but I’ve pulled it out forever by hand and never had a problem.
Same here. I would like to see a video like that, too. I’ve mistaken poison ivy for poison oak, according to this. I’m definitely one of the 85 percent that gets the rash. My husband, too. He got it on one side his face one time. Hideous. Poor guy.
The fact that so many other plants have a three leaf structure is why I added a corollary to the original poem. Leaves of three let it be. Shiny.like glass don't wipe your ass.
the best way of dealing with the rash and oils, I found in a youtube video. The orange citrus degreaser with the pumice, wash your whole body even if you only have it in one spot. I found I had trouble with the oils spreading, as they are more like grease than a liquid. This prevented that, and I've never had the rash start to develop even after exposure now. My kids use this method too and its been working for them.
Urushiol is a viscous oily substance so anything that will cut grease will tend to remove it. Just be sure whatever you are using is made to use on skin!
When we moved to our property years ago, we had some poison ivy on it. I would get a rash every June from patting our dog who had picked up some oil from running in our bush. I was not happy with that and after trying some more conservative measures ended up using Roundup to get rid of the plants. On one particularly hot sunny summer day, I actually got a bit of rash from simply being near a plant in full sun as the oil was vaporizing. One fall, I tried pulling up plants (before the Roundup phase). I had gloves on and long sleeves, but some roots must have touched my cheek. I ended up at emergency with a very puffed up face needing medication. Poison ivy may be good for pollinators and wildlife but there are lots of non poisonous plants that work as well. All my kids from a young age learned to identify poison ivy.
Your videos are awesome your channel will definitely grow keep it up!! Definitely want more videos on poison ivy I'm interested in it although Allergic I like your channels so much because it cuts to the chase and of course it's about plants=)
If I touch poison ivy, I immediately wash with dish or laundry detergent, vigorously, as if I was washing off car grease. If I manage to catch the first few blisters, I put a pinch of dry baking soda on the blisters and cover them with a waterproof bandaid. The blisters can't spread. I was able to work in a job with constant hand-washing with poison ivy on my hands by using baking soda this way, and the blisters disappeared after a few days.
Yep! Jewelweed is a great treatment for poison ivy and also for insect bites and stings. I did a video about it a couple of weeks ago: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7DDZq8Gci5Q.html
@@BackyardEcology In my considerable experience, a day spent removing and burning poison ivy is generally a great day! The following 7-10 days are the ones that suck.
@@swayback7375 Burning any of the plants in the Toxicodendron is a horrible idea. The smoke can drift with the wind and have impacts on people not even involved with the burning.
Had rash on my neck and wrists in winter a couple times before I realized cutting into it while felling trees is a very effective way of being exposed to the irritant contained in the chainsaw dust.Breathing it in could probably be very bad .
I had the exact same experience with immunity. I used to pull it up with bare hands and never got a rash, then one day I climbed a leaning tree that was covered with it and got a few bad, long-lasting rashes. I think the difference was having it "scrubbed in" like that, getting it past the natural oils (and I did have quite oily skin then).
I agree with the getting it ground into your skin. When I slid down that tree my arms were quite scuffed up - and the rash was in all the areas I had the abrasions.
Yeah I love oak tree saplings and want to preserve them. But I'm afraid they might be poison oak so I can't touch them with my hand. Same with black walnut saplings and poison sumac
One correction: the oils are released also with burning. Never should brush/land be cleared by burning if there is poison ivy present. The oils rise in the smoke and can be transported and deposited into eyes and onto skin, and inhaled.
My favorite disguise ive seen is when we had a boxelder with numerous baby suckers and branches coming out at the base with both young virginia creeper and poison ivy crawling up it.....right next to the easiest spot to get into the stream at our naturw summer camp. Youd think itd be a good teachable moment, but while it certainly was that, it didnt necessarily help them at all with distinguishing poison ivy, because boxelder can loom almost indistinguishable when youre only looking at the leaves
Urushiol is named after urushi, the Japanese word for lacquer. Natural lacquer comes from a Japanese plant related to poison ivy. Urushi also causes serious skin inflammation in susceptible people, so craftsmen always treated it with care.
Something I have noticed is that there are time's when the leaves have tiny droplets on their edges and when they do lookout I can feel the slight sting and itch as soon as I get it on me
This was very helpful. I have increasingly been getting better at identifying poison ivy (relatively new to botany) and this video has opened my mind to what to look for this winter. I was one to claim immunity to it until last year I picked up landscaping as a summer job moving to a new area. I got it on and off all summer long. Every time I would get rashes all down the side of my body and limbs. The softer part of arms, torso, and legs. But, now (not landscaping regularly) I still work in the woods and cross through it regularly without one incident of rash. So weird and mysterious how it works and this video helped clarify some gray area in my knowledge. Thanks!
We live in the woods, and in 17 years neither we nor even any visitors walking through the woods have gotten a rash from the poison ivy that is abundant here- EXCEPT when moist dirt apparently having poison ivy roots touched my wrists below my gloves. A coworker got a severe case in the same way, working in her garden. This has me thinking that soil with poison ivy roots is an especially powerful source of irritation.
The oil is inside of the poison ivy plants. It is only released when the plant is bruised or otherwise injured which is why just walking in it can result in no rash. Soil can be abrasive and garden work can cause enough damage to poison ivy to release the oils.
There is no feeling so helpless as watching a family from a country where of the existence of this genus is unknown happily rolling in the leaves. See also Harpo Marx's autobiography, _Harpo Speaks_ and read the chapter about "The Only Normal Man In Hollywood".
The worst case of poison ivy rash I ever got was from a tree that fell in the road in an ice storm. Of course it was hard to tell what was on/in the tree and it had to be moved...😬 completely covered my upper torso and thighs, soaking through my clothes as the ice melted.
We have poison ivy and poison oak and poison sumac here in East Texas. You learn fast to identify these three plants! Usually they have a gloss from the urushiol oil. I have had rashes from these plants so many times as an adult, but as a kid I never had any even though I played around poison oak all the time. The best thing I have found to do is to wash with Fels Naphtha soap as soon as I come inside.
Ya know, I watched your video ready to argue your content... but I can't, you were spot on on all points you made. I might have a little problem with it being a "shrub". I have never ever seen poison ivy/oak a shrub. I have seen it climbing on a shrub, with near invisable thread like stalks. Sneaky little sobs... As a kid, on my parents property, the poison ivy was very fine, very smooth leaf margins and the prettiest pale green color you've ever seen. Very fine vine stalks and it would climb up the touch-me-nots...funny, touch-me-nots contain the anti-toxin to their poison. Jewel weed is the other name. I told my cousin not to touch them one day when we were kids, he said "oh BS" that not poison ivy!" and he grabbed some and rubbed on his arm....ug, he was in the emergency room a couple hours later.... I was about 11 years old then. He never doubted my advice since!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video. I don't see poison ivy growing as a shrub everywhere, but in some places it i quite common. Where I grew up in northern IN it was common to see poison ivy growing as 2-6 foot tall shrubs.
Interesting. I’ve never had a reaction to poison ivy, even when everyone else I was with ended up covered in rashes. But that was when I was in my 20s and 30s, more than two decades ago. I never knew that my sensitivity (or lack thereof) could change. I haven’t been out into the woods in years due to mobility impairments, but I’ll have to make sure not to wander into unknown brush if I ever do get out into the wild areas around here again. I never learned to identify poison ivy because it never affected me, so that needs to change, too.
My son is so sensitive that he does not need to be near it, just get hit with some pollen on a windy day and he has a rash. I'm in the opposite camp, our poison ivy is the ground cover type and I have caught myself wading through it knee deep with shorts on many times and not so much as an itch.
I've had poison ivy since February (it's now August) I am just constantly exposed to it. I take benedryl before bed and cover the blisters with a sleeve or bandaid. Keeping my histamine response under control helps a lot. Jewel weed is amazing, when I can find it.
If poison oak stays rash-producing in winter like poison ivy does, luck must've been with me the day I had to pee and was pointed to in a thicket of "dead" poison oak. I'm quite sensitive and walked away with nary a rash.
when I was a kid I got a GREAT BIG poison ivy reaction - then for 50 years NOTHING - I was the one who had the job of taking it down when someone found it - then boom ... about 5 years ago I pulled some out in my yard and I got a reaction again - HERE IS THE FOOD FOR THOUGHT : this all happened in different parts of the country so can poison ivy be different depending on where you live??
It is the same compound that causes the reaction regardless of location. I have gone from never getting it, to having some really bad reactions, and back to basically no reaction to it and all in within the same general geographic area. Sensitivity to poison ivy just changes over time for many people.
You probably got a really bad poison ivy outbreak after sliding down the tree because the friction compromised your skin and you basically put poison ivy directly in your bloodstream. Glad you're okay.
I seem to be one of those people who are not sensitive to poison ivy as an adult. Although when I was growing up, that was a different story. I was quite familiar with calamine lotion. According to my mother, this sensitivity disappeared after a particularly bad encounter with the plant. Regardless, I can now walk through poison ivy and even touch it without ill effects. However, I have not attempted to test this further such as in situations where the leaves have been cut or torn'; what little exposure I have had is very brief. So I do not know, and do not care to know, if I could still get poison ivy rash. It is enough to know that under normal circumstances I seem to be immune to brief contact with the plant.
My grandpa, could weed it, cut it, etc and not have any reaction whatsoever. He was like this whole life, I wish it had been passed down genetically to me
The urushiol can stay active for quite some time, how long depends on a bunch of variables, but it is best to wash off any equipment that has come into contact with poison ivy.
On the leaves? Those would be galls and are caused by a species of mite. Or if you are referring to the small white beads that form in clusters, those are the berries.
I have had so many terrible experiences with this stuff in my life. My dad, however, could roll in it with zero reaction. He was also one of those weird people on whom every watch would immediately stop, though. A hillbilly unicorn?
I am mmune to poison ivy. As a kid, my cousin and I would play in the woods and she would come home covered with poison ivy and I never had a mark on me. In the 70;s I worked at a medical school. They were paying $1000 for A study. They rubbed me.,..nothing. Finally they injected a little under the skin. Nothing. I really wanted that $1000!!! Is it possible that poison ivy is an allergy?
Yes, the technical term for the rash is allergic contact dermatitis. It happens because your body sees the urushiol as a foreign substance and the response produces the rash.
"leaves of three let it be" is a woefully ignorant saying and we need to abandon it. Stop teaching this to your children! so many wonderful plants have three leaves.
Leaves of three is only useful as a prompt to take a closer look at the plant to verify what it is, but yes, there are so many plants with trifoliate leaves avoiding them all is rather pointless and quite impossible.
Well, that’s a dumb statement in the fact that as children it’s a easy thing to remember. I grew up with that saying and I learned when I was old enough what was actually poison ivy and what is it so send your children out and say that they will cautiously avoid plants with three leaves until they’re old enough to actually identify it. So that is just plain ridiculous to even say. It’s for the information of people who have not learned the names of any plants out there you know like the young. Though I must say people today, don’t seem to know anything. They don’t even know what an oak tree is versus a maple tree. They don’t teach anything in school about that that kind of stuff apparently.
Poison ivy always has an alternate arrangement of its compound leaves on the stem of the plant. It is basic botany - plants have either an alternate, opposite, or whorled leaf arrangement. It is one of the main characters used to help identify plants.
