Is That Vine Poison Ivy……Or Not?

I have a lot of poison ivy. Fortunately I’m not allergic to it. Maybe all those times fishing for trout barefoot when I was a kid helped desensitize me to it? It grows pretty big, reaching a foot tall, but I have never seen it climb anything where I live, trees or otherwise. It sticks to the ground, at least every plant I have ever seen does, but it’s vine-like root system travels a long way just under the leaf litter. It gets clumps of tiny blossoms in the Spring, and white pea-sized berries in the Fall. Also in the Fall, the leaves turn red and/or yellow.

Poison Ivy likes shade, growing all around under the trees, I’ve never seen it climb here but I have seen pictures from places where it does:


Flowers in the Spring:


Berries in the Fall. The red leaf on the right side of the photo is poison ivy, the other leaves are not:


One other vine that does climb trees is wild grapes:


I hate grapevines. They are such a tangled mess and sometimes make for dangerous wood cutting. They get big enough that I am able to cut a few pieces of firewood out of them, but not big enough to split them:


Another vine that climbs trees is this thing. It’s leaves turn bright red in the Fall. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it’s not poison ivy:


And then there’s this thing that climbs trees. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not poison ivy either:


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill