A Rash of Trouble


© Emily Levitt
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Page 2

Apr 23, 1999


  • Pets can carry sap from their fur into your home, infecting you if you sit where they sit, or handle their fur. Wash exposed animals with pet soap, water and rubbing alcohol and wear disposable rubber gloves.

  • Exposed clothing can carry the toxin for YEARS. Wash contaminated clothing SEPARATELY and re-wash your empty washing machine after cleaning contaminated garments. If you are really sensitive-as I am- you may need to dry clean your clothes, or wear old clothes and just pitch them.

  • Exposed skin should be washed with soap and cold water AND a liberal amount of one part water/one part rubbing alcohol.

  • Birds eat the poison berries following fruition in the fall, and deposit them throughout the forest. (So, plant something else for them to eat!) That's why the vines come back, again and again.

  • Cloven-hooved animals will eat these plants without distress. I only speak to their digestion, not the ozone depletion they create... Should you decide to turn a herd of goats loose on your poison sumac, keep the little baa-babes there for a while. It takes several years for their digestive tracts to destroy all the seeds.

    The other two green demons are poison oak, found commonly in North American forests., and poison sumac, which is found in boggy areas.

    This picture of a big ,happy poison oak shrub comes from the Cornell poisonous plant page. More information can be found on their site--- There's enough sap in this bad boy to make a host of humans miserable.

    http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/plan...

    Here at right is an illustration-from the IvyGone folks- of poison sumac. It has a teminate leaf (the one sticking off the tip of the stem) and six or seven leaves on each branch. Its' berries are purplish in color. While not as common as the others, it is just as unpleasant.

    Infection from exposure to poisonous plants accounts for over 10% of lost work time in the Forest Service. ( And these are folks who know what they're doing in the woods!) The recently released topical product IvyGone was developed to help forest professionals keep toxic seceretions from bonding with their skin. I am told it is quite helpful, but I'm still wary!

    Yes, these are native plants, but they are NOT friendly. Unless you want to keep a goat in your garden for several years to eat them, the best advise is to eradicate them and remember what my son learned in Boy Scouts-

    "Leaves of three, leave it be---
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    Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages
    5.   Mar 2, 2000 5:01 PM
    Emily,

    Problem being finding a beekeeper sorting his honey. He or she would have to be a freak (like I used to be) and use shallow supers, then label each according to the nectar source being visit ...

    -- posted by bindweed
    4.   Mar 2, 2000 8:14 AM
    that beekeepers liked the blossoms! I ate locally produced honey all my life, as my grandfather kept a half dozen hives not far from a huge stand of poison ivy. We never had the store bought stuff. RE ...

    -- posted by emilylevitt
    3.   Feb 29, 2000 9:17 AM
    Great article Emily,

    This Pacific Northwest gardener tends to miss some aspects of Poison Oak. In CA this wonderful plant was much visited by bees, and both in CA and Oregon poison oak yields a del ...

    -- posted by bindweed
    2.   May 24, 1999 5:08 PM
    was probabaly the culprit, somewhere along the line.

    -- posted by emilylevitt
    1.   May 24, 1999 5:05 PM
    poison ivy

    (posted by Emily, for Eric)

    Emily,
    > >
    > > interesting article on toxic natives. One off-beat
    > > way to get poison ivy
    > > (?sumac) poisoning is from a sand pile - the one we
    > ...

    -- posted by emilylevitt



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