Wild Things: Why you may want to rethink poison ivy

By ED KANZE

Admittedly, the beautiful native woody vine known as poison ivy has a downside. Bruise it, liberate a little sap containing the chemical urushiol, and if you’re allergic, as a great many of us are, you’ll suffer a rash. (Call it contact dermatitis, if you want to get medical about it). In a severe case, the dermatitis can be so painful and relentless that you may wish you’d never been born. 

I’ve never had a horrific case of poison ivy, but I remember a childhood friend of mine getting into the stuff so badly that his face swelled like a balloon. Over a period of hours, his eyes narrowed to slits, and he had trouble breathing. This is the next-to-most dangerous sort of poison ivy reaction. Medical attention is required.

The most dangerous comes from the burning of poison ivy leaves or other parts of the plant. According to a paper by Samantha Woolery et al., published in 2022 in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, “Here, we present 2 unrelated cases of urushiol respiratory exposure status after burning of poison ivy that resulted in cardiopulmonary arrest and ultimately death.” 

That sentence got my attention. So did this one: “Clinicians and forensic pathologists should be aware of the fact that urushiol smoke exposure may lead to morbidity and mortality.”

To this somber conclusion, I feel compelled to add one of my own. Clinicians and forensic pathologists aren’t the only ones who might want to be aware of the dangers of burning poison ivy. 

When I think of my own unhappy encounters with poison ivy, two come to mind. One was the time I handled old wooden fenceposts on which woolly vines had grown. These woolly vines (which I recognized as poison ivy) had surely been dead for a year or more, but the urushiol in them that had oozed when the plants first froze still had plenty of sting left. I suffered itching and oozing and trouble falling asleep for weeks. 

The other wince-worthy time came when I was still writing on a typewriter, and a deadline was looming. I came down with a raging poison ivy rash on both hands. Tapping keys became impossible as swollen fingers banged into each other. Having heard the frequently repeated claim that the sap of the wildflower known as spotted jewelweed makes an effective treatment, I hurried outside. I found jewelweed, crushed a few juicy stems, and covered my hands with the sap. It worked! Alas, I have tried duplicating this success in years since, but it only worked that once.

But I digress. I come not to bury poison ivy under tales of woe but to praise it.

What good can be said of this much loathed plant? For starters, it’s beautiful. The leaves are lush and usually shiny, and their occurrence in triplets lends appeal to the eye. The appeal is greatly heightened in fall, when the leaves of poison ivy turn the same sorts of orange, red and yellow as the celebrated foliage of sugar maples.

Poison ivy supplies nutritious greens, stems and fruits for wildlife. Cottontail rabbits eat poison ivy, and so do whitetail deer, bears, muskrats and mice. We can’t eat it, but plenty of other animals can.

However, the most compelling reason to appreciate, and maybe even love, poison ivy is the importance of its fruits to migrating and overwintering birds. In late summer and fall, the white, waxy fruits ripen. Sixty or more species of bird gorge on them, including thrushes, mimics, woodpeckers and warblers. Poison ivy fruits offer less energy to birds in the form of fat than do richer morsels such as the fruits of dogwoods, but this deficiency brings a benefit. Poison ivy fruits usually linger into winter, when they offer critical calories to birds struggling to survive.