Poison Ivy

          Yesterday I spent several hours searching for and spraying poison ivy out in the woods. This farm is not very large as farms go. When it was all cleared and growing a decent pasture one could see most of it from a high perch. Now, in the last 18 years it is mostly trees of the oak, walnut, hackberry, cedar, Osage orange, gray dogwood and my nemesis black locust variety. It has become so thick that as I wandered through areas off my paths it was not always easy to know exactly where I was. 

          I have a new-found respect for poison ivy these days. Mother Nature seems to have blessed the plant with the ability to grow in shade, sun, under trees and just about anywhere. It comes in many different forms and is disguised to look like many other plants. I have searched the internet for recognition of the different varieties and even experts are not sure about which plants are and are not poison ivy. The one thing that will tell you for sure a plant is not poison ivy is if the stem has thorns. 

          When we raised sheep here, there was never any poison ivy because the sheep loved eating it. In fact I could duck down and see most of the way back to the property line because the sheep ate everything as high as they could reach. Birds eat the berries on the more mature poison ivy plants and then spread them even further. Without a herd of sheep or goats I suppose there will always be poison ivy here because there are always plants in the woods that I miss no matter how much I search and destroy.