The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-05-21
POISON IVY AND lockwood.
The Only Native Plants I'm the United
States Which Are Poisonous to the
Touch.

(From the New York Evening Post)
We have only two native plants in the
United States which are poisonous to the
touch, and put one of these is likely to be
met with. That one, however, is so
omnipresent that the terror of it's name
covers half the lovely wild things that
ought to be our summer delight 1t is
KIN own as poison ivy, and it grows every
where, East and South, as well as upon
the Pacific slope, where it differs little
from the eastern species. Its habitat is
aim ost unlimited; but it prefers sunny
sandy tracts, on mountain, pasture or
coast. 1t spreads by the roadside, perches
on fence posts, where it has long reigned
just beyond the reach of the plow; climbs
trees, and, waving from their boughs,
threatens the passing carriage; slides into
the orchard among the daisies; wraps
itself about the rocks. Mercury vine is
its slippery and insidious habits. When
the picknicker in romantic groves stretch
es his tired limbs, he finds he is lying
upon a bed of ivy; he pulls himself up a
hill by a tough shrub he finds, to his
horror, is poison ivy. If he kindles his
particularly poisonous when burning. In
order to avoid such a pest every child
ought to be taught to recognize it.
Rhus INSTRUMENTATION, Greek and Celtic
for red-poison- bush, is its name in botany
and in medicine. 1t is an active acrid
minute watery blisters, which may pass
| through several stages of malignancy.
Some persons are never poisoned by it,;
others are sometimes poisoned, and yet
others cannot even pass it in certain
stages of it's growth without being affect
ed Often it results in long and painful
| illness; in rare cases it is fatal. One cir
cumstance that increases liability to dan
ger from it is the variability of its aspect;
another is its resemblance to the innocent
| Virginia creeper. Both are freely mingled
on our roadsides. Popularity they are
both vines, but that term belongs only to
the creeper; that is strictly vine, with
all the grace and suppleness of the wild
grape, to which it is nearly related. 1t
has the same long, fnger-like tendrils
waving SSQuCblNSly 1UOttb w llllN ooIlC
chance support, and resets of palmshaped
leaves, as if grape leaf had been cut
| into five portions set with fine sawteeth
| along the edges. On the contrary, rhus
has three leaflets, the end one the largest
and remote from the others, all irregular
| ly and coarsely toothed. No two of the
leaves are just alike. 1t has no tendrils,
but climbs, like English ivy, by little
bristling rootlets which sprout all along
the main stem, and eventually cover it
| like moss. These rootlets penetrate
posts or bark of trees, and cling there SO
| tightly that the plant cannot be torn off
without difficulty.
The companionship of these two most
common climbers is quite remarkable,
| also, when the radical difference of their
natures is considered. Another confusing
circumstance is the use of the same COM
mon name-ivy. This seems kind of
synonym for any species of climbing
plant. We hear of Kenilworth ivy and
German ivy, English ivy and poison ivy,
all totally different plants. Nothing
able nomenclature for plants. In Cali
fornia where rhus is dangerously album
dant, it is known as poison oak, growing
in clearings like stout shrub, with foil
age much like the young white oak it so
freely mingles with. Only most prac-
! teal eye can distinguish them. From a
beautiful irregularity of its leaves it has
| gained the specific name of diversilOba.
1t palms itself off, as it We're, for some
thing better than itself, and creeps around
under many DISCUSSES. A lady artis-
tically fond of wild plants, and one who
had lived many years in its neighborhood
in the mountain valleys, did not recog-
nize the poison oak as it grew in a canyon
behind her new home near the coast. She
diligently gathered great basketfuls, and
had wreathed her pictures with it. But
it was soon bounced upon by Mortified
visitor, detected under its guise of beauty
and quickly hustled beyond the premises.
1t seems strange that such a pest should
still remain so common in the older parts
of our country. In California, you expect
to warn your friends not to brush against
it as they walk through the streets of
paved towns but in Boston, on the road
| to Newton, you would scarcely expect to
find it rampant in an old apple orchard,
and reaching over the stone wall into the
very hands of children. This has been
the case for years, and may be SO STILL
| The other of our two poisonous North
American plants is the swamp sumach,
known also as swamp dogwood, casting
| its bane by this name over the dogwoods
which are harmless. 1t is a small tree,
with some of the appearance of sumach,
but it grows only in low, fiat, marshy
soils, where few persons find it. This,
| too, is a rhus, rhus venenata. 1t has a
poisonous brightness in autumn, and
sometimes gets culled for it's beauty, but
seldom does it get picked without serious
consequences.