Home » Plants & Animals » Historical Plants » Petrifying Poison Ivy - Page 2

Petrifying Poison Ivy - Page 2

© Audrey Stallsmith

The hairy brown vine can grow almost anywhere, but seems to prefer partial shade. It produces clusters of small off-white flowers in June, which are followed by gray berries. Poison ivy's resinous juice turns black when exposed to air and is infected with a substance called urushiol. That substance, according to James Duke's The Green Pharmacy "does its dirty work by binding to skin cells and triggering the rash-producing irritation. A mere one-billionth of a gram of urushiol is enough to affect those who are highly sensitive."

Duke should know, since he credits poison ivy for his decision to become a botanist. "One time, long ago when I was a kid, I. . .unknowingly used poison ivy as toilet paper. I got a bad rash in a bad spot, and it tormented me for more than a week. To avoid a repeat of that experience, I figured it would serve me well to learn how to recognize poisonous plants."

We country kids were always warned to wash ourselves with a strong alkaline laundry soap such as Fels-Naphtha, if we felt we'd come in contact with poison ivy. The other most popular antidote is probably jewelweed. (Also called touch-me-not or snapweed, this rescuer grows wild in semi-shady places too. The orange flowered type pictured to the left here is officially known as impatiens capensis or biflora and the yellow has been dubbed impatiens pallida.)

Duke espouses jewelweed himself, saying he rubs all of his exposed skin with the crushed plant before he has to handle poison ivy. He reports his friend, Robert Rosen, "may have come up with an explanation for jewelweed's effectiveness. . .Dr. Rosen has identified the active ingredient in jewelweed as a chemical called lawsone. This substance binds to the same molecular sites on the skin as urushiol. If applied quickly after contact with a poisonous plant, lawsone beats the urushiol to those sites, in effect locking it out."

If it's too late for jewelweed, Heinerman's Encyclopedia of Fruits, Vegetables, and Herbs recommends any of the following as a soother for your rash: acorn infusion, aloe vera, cornstarch, goldenseal infusion, watermelon pulp, or an infusion combining okra, slippery elm bark, and white oak bark.

Believe it or not, poison ivy does have its uses. It has been employed to treat other types of skin eruptions, such as herpes, as well as incontinence, palsy, paralysis, and rheumatism. And that dark juice makes a nice indelible ink or shoe polish-presuming you can come up with some way to detoxify it!

The copyright of the article Petrifying Poison Ivy - Page 2 in Historical Plants is owned by . Permission to republish Petrifying Poison Ivy - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.