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Poison I eye-eye-eye-eye VEE....

© Barbara Hall

Now seems as good a time as any to explore the QUEEN OF ALL WEEDS: Poison Ivy. (Do you all have any idea just how many Batman files I had to wade through to find you some links with real info on them???) I know a little too much about this plant first-hand (and arm and leg and face....) but I did find out a few things I didn't know before. Seems Cap'n John Smith named this itchmistress Poison Ivy WAAAAAY back in 1609. The proper botanical names have shifted around over the years too, so you'll see it called Rhus radicans as well as Toxicodendron radicans. The latter seems to be the more correct these days, as Toxicodendrons have white or cream-colored berries and the Rhuses have red berries. If you really want the scientific, official, long-worded scoop on just what goes on with Poison Ivy and your skin, try reading this out loud with a straight face.

Throughout my many years in gardening I have had some academy award-winning cases of P.I. . When I was 12, I remember getting it in my eye in November. Oh yes, it can be done, got smacked across the eye with a dead vine. I stayed out of school for an entire week because I looked like such an X-file. I was SUCH a pathetic, oozy, itchy swollen mess that when my mother took me down to the little local pharmacy, I remember the pharmacist taking one look at me and handing me a dose of clear pink antihistamine to drink right from the glass beaker. As a kid, that's all they knew to do for us - Calamine lotion and antihistamines. So I slept through most of my cases of poison ivy during those years. I know better now.

The one thing that all my snuffled links agreed upon was that prevention was by far the best treatment. Know what it looks like and don't TOUCH it! But that's a bit easier said than done as it's a bit of a chameleon. In the spring the sweet glistening red leaves are so new and innocent. Yeah, RIGHT. And in the summer they're shiny (or not) and they always have THREE leaves to the cluster (unless they have 5 or 7) and the edges of the leaves are always smooth (except for the ones that aren't) and of course we all know it's always a vine (except for the shrub ones). Hello, and we're in trouble out here in the woods! And what do we do when there are no leaves! We get smacked in the eye with a bare vine and get it anyway.

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