Home » Plants & Animals » Weeds & Wild Plants » Poison I eye-eye-eye-eye VEE.... - Page 2

Poison I eye-eye-eye-eye VEE.... - Page 2

© Barbara Hall

So where do we start. Here on this tree trunk. If you see a big, hairy-rooted snake of a root going up the trunk, best you go find something else to do. From that snake of a root often come very arrogant outward-reaching branches just WAITING for you to walk by. While a few of the sources I found said that the toxic oil Urushiol is only evident when a leaf is broken or crushed, I beg to differ, as I have gotten some of my 'best' cases from handling dry, dead vines. The leaves are pretty easy to spot and someone is bound to start reciting "Leave of Three, Let it Be". They do start out red in the spring, go various shades of green for the summer and end up red or yellow for fall. I found one extremely comprehensive site that just about does it all, including the 'cousins': Poison Oak and Poison Sumac

So let's say, for all our best efforts, we're merrily weeding near this stone wall and we look at our hand in horror to find we have a bouquet of Poison Ivy. Screaming is just fine at this point. Next step is to wash AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. It takes a mere three minutes for that lovely Urushiol to penetrate your skin. Within the next 10 minutes you have a prayer of cutting down on the AMOUNT of damage you'll sustain if you scrub down with baking soda. I keep grated cheese shaker-jars full of baking soda at all the sinks during P.I. season. Wet your skin, sprinkle on the baking soda and scrub thoroughly, but don't smear it around to places you know have not been exposed to the plant. Now rinse. And rinse some more, and how about some more (get between those fingers!). I had a student once who came up to me and pronounced that my baking soda preventative didn't work. Her son still got poison ivy head to toe in October. I began to ask how she did it and she told me she washed him all over with baking soda IN THE BATHTUB. Whoa. Hold it. That's equivalent to simmering the kid in Poison Ivy broth. Shower. You have to rinse him in the shower, otherwise you're just spreading it around.

Chapter four, we've done everything and lo and behold here come the dreaded blisters anyway. You need to scream some more, go ahead. Then go get some TECNU. Yes I am an Herbalist, and yes I'll give you the recipe for Five Buddies in a Blender in a minute, but TECNU is the only over-the counter preparation that has a prayer of stopping you from becoming your own leper colony once the rash has begun. The trick with the TECNU is that you have to rub it on for a FULL TWO MINUTES. Time that. It's a LONG time to rub.

The copyright of the article Poison I eye-eye-eye-eye VEE.... - Page 2 in Weeds & Wild Plants is owned by . Permission to republish Poison I eye-eye-eye-eye VEE.... - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.