Leaves of three, let it be, At some point in their life, almost everyone who has ever ventured out into the woods in Mid-Michigan has heard the phrase "Leaves of three, let it be." as a warning to avoid poison ivy.
Oddly enough this phrase causes more confusion than it solves. I have seen people, both children and adults, avoid such plants as Wild Strawberry, Raspberry, Trillium, Box Elder, etc. because they were afraid that the plant was Poison Ivy.
The list of plants that I have see people confuse for poison ivy includes...In all fairness, the majority of plants that people misidentify as Poison Ivy are young plants that lack flowers. The idea of three leaves is so ingrained in many people that they assume any plant with three leaves to be poison ivy.
Another thing that confuses people about Poison Ivy is the fact that it can appear in multiple forms depending on species.
Western Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron rydbergii) is a can be a short groundcover less than 6 inches tall or a shrub from 1 to 4 foot tall. Eastern Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) is a climbing vine. These vines can be thin in young plants or they can be 3 inches thick twining around a tree with no leaves visible for the first 20 feet. The vines of Eastern Poison Ivy are often hairy.
If there is one plant that people seem to confuse the most with Poison Ivy it is this one...
Oddly enough this phrase causes more confusion than it solves. I have seen people, both children and adults, avoid such plants as Wild Strawberry, Raspberry, Trillium, Box Elder, etc. because they were afraid that the plant was Poison Ivy.
The list of plants that I have see people confuse for poison ivy includes...In all fairness, the majority of plants that people misidentify as Poison Ivy are young plants that lack flowers. The idea of three leaves is so ingrained in many people that they assume any plant with three leaves to be poison ivy.
Another thing that confuses people about Poison Ivy is the fact that it can appear in multiple forms depending on species.
Western Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron rydbergii) is a can be a short groundcover less than 6 inches tall or a shrub from 1 to 4 foot tall. Eastern Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) is a climbing vine. These vines can be thin in young plants or they can be 3 inches thick twining around a tree with no leaves visible for the first 20 feet. The vines of Eastern Poison Ivy are often hairy.
If there is one plant that people seem to confuse the most with Poison Ivy it is this one...
