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Could you do a flow chart for Poison Oak. We pretty much have the Ivy identified but found out that we will be going by some poison oak near a cache we are planning on doing this week and would like to be able to steer clear of that too.
Oh the fun of summer caching, ticks, poisonous plants, biting flies, mosquitos, stinging nettle, blackberry and raspberry bushes, meandering bears and now a cougar siting in our area… did I miss anything?
Timberline Echoes
@Timberline Echoes wrote:
Could you do a flow chart for Poison Oak. We pretty much have the Ivy identified but found out that we will be going by some poison oak near a cache we are planning on doing this week and would like to be able to steer clear of that too.
I think the flowchart will work for poison oak as well, since one of the things you are not supposed to do is look at the shape of the leaves on the suspect plant. PO also has leaflets with 3 leaves, no thorns, and a longer stem on the middle leaf. I’m not sure if the leaflets come off the main stem in pairs like PI, but I’d guess so… I could not find any reference material that says this is true though.
Big difference between the two is that the poison oak leaves kind of look like oak leaves (rounded lobes/tips) when they are mature, and that poison oak is deciduous (loses its leaves in winter, and they grow back in spring). I’m not sure if these plants can actually survive the winter here as the only stuff I’ve seen is short/small plants that look like PI with different leaves… in the southeast it grows as a bush that lives for many years, and on the West coast they really don’t have PI but have PO that can grow as a short plant, woody bush, or climbing vine.
Poison sumac is a different animal entirely (grows as a small tree with leaflets that don’t match the “leaves of 3” rule), but you shouldn’t encounter it unless you are slogging around in a swamp in southern Wisconsin.
Poison Sumac Info
Poison Ivy and Poison Oak are basically the same plant. They’re differant varieties of the same species. Posion Oak doesn’t live in Wisconsin naturally. They both prefer to grow in partially shaded areas on well drained soil, although will grow in full sun.
Poison Ivy can be a groundcover, vine or small shrub. I saw all forms at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois a couple of weeks ago. The leaves can be the size of a dime or as large as 12″ long. The leaves and stems can be green, red, burgundy or yellow (or any combination).
Most people confuse Poison Ivy with Virginia Creeper (as stated), Raspberries or Box Elder. Poison Sumac is a completely differant species. It has a differant shape and color. It grows in the southern part of the state in swampy areas!
All parts of the Poison Ivy, Oak and Sumac plants have the irritating oil. The flower (white) the berry (white) the leaves, the stems, the roots. When the plant is dead – the oil is not.
Best advice is if you don’t know, what the plant is, leave it alone. Garlic Mustard is almost as irritating to the skin as Poison Ivy only the irritation is painful and immediate.
While we’re worrying about plants that we encounter, don’t forget about Wild Parsnip.
OOOOOHHHHHH Bad Parsnip!!!! I ran into this last week. It was worse than the poison ivy! Dashed back to the car and headed to the first restroom available to wash. Nasty, nasty stuff!
@bnb wrote:
While we’re worrying about plants that we encounter, don’t forget about Wild Parsnip.
Good reminder on this bad plant Ruth. I have been burned a couple times and (worse) had the brown “scars” for many months afterwards. The article linked to above has good information on wild parsnip but not much on identifying the plant, so here are a couple more:
Wild Parsnip – PA Invasive Plant Tutorial
Pastinaca sativa L., Wisconsin Flora SiteSome random notes on wild parsnip:
– It only grows in full sunlight and likes “marginal” soils in disturbed areas. Places I normally see it are in old farm fields, old railroad beds, and former logging roads (in non-shaded areas).
– You need to get a decent quantity the parsnip “juice” on you before you get burned. Just accidentally brushing up against a plant one time probably won’t do it, unlike poison ivy. The plant needs to be damaged in order to expose the juice; it does not normally seep out onto the leaves, etc.
– If you are caching in a parsnip area, you may want to walk out a different way than you came in to avoid touching a plant you trampled on the way in. Also walking on a deer trail when bushwhacking through a field may be easier than busting your own trail, but could expose you to the damaged parsnip plants. My two worse burn incidents were from a) using a deer trail through an old farm field and b) walking on an overgrown railroad bed turned unofficial hiking trail where the plants were being pushed against and stepped on. In both cases it was late summer/early fall, so the plants lacked the characteristic umbrella of small yellow flowers (at least I don’t remember seeing them).
– If you think you are exposed, you can always just keep the area out of the sun by putting on a jacket or long pants. (Of course this may be out of the question if it is 90+ degrees out. :))
@jeremy wrote:
@jthorson wrote:
Color me impressed.
25 minutes from request to response with a positive ID.
Jeff, this is really just a result of not having enough stuff to keep me occupied at work. 🙂
Speaking of not having enough stuff to keep me busy, I also put together a little flowchart to help people identify poison ivy. Basically it outlines what I look for when I try to positively identify a plant as poison ivy (you can tell I like to think logically :)).
I could find nothing like this on the internet or elsewhere… most sites, posters, identification cards, etc. just have pictures of poison ivy. It is kind of a pain to compare a plant in the field to these pictures. Plus poison ivy leaves can vary from plant to plant and it can grow in a number of configurations, so the pictures given in a guidebook may not exactly match real poison ivy. But if you kind of sort of know what poison ivy looks like, you can simply look for a couple key characteristics on a suspect plant (shown on the flowchart) to either rule it out as poison ivy or positively identify it as poison ivy.
Poison Ivy Identification Flowchart 1.0 (PDF)
Poison Ivy Identification Flowchart 1.0 (JPG)At some point, I plan to add some small, hand drawn pictures to help people with the flow chart decision points. Also, I am not a botanist or anything, so if people have suggestions on decision points to be added or ways to clarify the terminology being used, let me know.
Jeremy … your flow chart is leaving out the most important consideration, which should be first in the chart …
Does the plant have colorful flowers?
No, continue down the chart.
Yes, pull them out of the ground.(just kidding!)
@energysaver wrote:
Jeremy … your flow chart is leaving out the most important consideration, which should be first in the chart …
Does the plant have colorful flowers?
No, continue down the chart.
Yes, pull them out of the ground.Ron, maybe it should have been the inverse.
Does the plant have colorful flowers? If yes, then it is POISON IVY… do not touch! 😀
@Team B Squared wrote:
@jeremy wrote:
@Team B Squared wrote:
Jeremy, do you mind if I share this with the people in the Michigan Geocaching Organization Forums?
Nope, share away. Hopefully no one gets PI after using the logic though, since it has my name and email address on it (I can imagine some nasty emails if someone does get a rash). 🙂
I wouldn’t worry too much about nasty emails from that group, I have found them to be an exceedingly friendly group, just like most here! I think they will appreciate the info, as there has been a lot of pi talk in the forums over there recently.
After attending the MidWest Geo-Bash, we can attest to the friendliness of the great folks over at MiGO. We made many new friends, both from MI and OH. They are an exceptional group of people and we wish that lake wasn’t so big between us. Can a duck swim farther than a penguin? 😉
~CB
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