Saturday, June 20, 2015

Important: Avoid poison ivy and poison oak!


This is poison ivy! Sometimes the leaves have notches, sometimes it has a shiny reddish appearance. The constant characteristic is that the leaves grow in threes. Getting the oil on your skin can cause a miserable itchy rash. Most of you know this, but I want to warn those who don't! 

"Leaves of three, let it be!"


And here's a photo of poison oak, below. Terri left a comment on this post about poison oak, so I added this photo. It looks like a baby oak tree. It would be tempting to pick some of this for a floral arrangement. Note to self: Don't do that!



5 comments:

ThreeOldKeys said...

Agreed!!! I used to scoff at concerns over poison ivy but that was before I experienced it. In November.

If you see a hairy rope vine climbing up a tree, it's probably poison ivy.

Terri said...

Finally someone shows a picture... now we'd like to know what poison oak looks like. My son has had the rash from po many times... it's just as bad as pi. It probably grows in all the places that pi does not, just to cover all the bases.
Hugs

Selvage Quilter said...

I added a photo of poison oak. It looks like a little oak tree to me. Easy to get tricked.

Carol said...

I researched poison ivy quite a bit last summer trying to definitely identify some in a neighbor's yard. One thing I learned among many is that when you look at the 3 leaflets that are growing together, the lower 2 leaflets are attached very close to the stem at the base of each of those two lower leaves. The upper leaf of the 3 is growing a slight distance away--maybe a half inch. Also, the leaves have a slight "mitten" shape, in that there is a slight protruding "thumb" on the lower part of the leaf. Interesting findings.

Terri said...

My problem with that little oak tree would be transplanting it into a cup as an oak tree and giving it as a gift at Halloween out of the Harry Potter greenhouse. Guess free range oaks will be off the list from now on.
Thanks for showing the two. I'm referring this to my son.
Hugs