A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum Mystery Plants? Now my brother has a mystery...

He emailed me these pics, and asked me to post them here for him.

With the leaves being grouped in 3's he was worried about it being some sort of poison, and they have little kids that they wouldn't want touching it if it is.....I don't think it's poison ivy, the leaves look too serrated, but I could be wrong---I've been wrong about poison before.

whew.......looks similar though!

I know, maybe it is....I've always had a hard time telling poison ivy from other things...usually I get my dad to come look because he's so good at knowing different poisons.....

Speaking of, I have poison ivy right now.....just some little itchy bumps on my hand--nothing bad.....i covered them with clear nailpolish....the neighbor girl let me use her lighter and then proceeded to show me her poison ivy rash all over her body. YIKES.

Loz, peroxide works well getting rid of poison ivy. I got it BAD a couple years ago. It bubbles the yucky out of it and helps it dry up quicker. I never had any luck with the nail polish.

I think the plant looks like poison ivy. The funky darker green stuff in the middle looks like poison oak.

Is this in their garden? They look like astilbe to me, a flowering perennial. It wouldn't just show up, they would have planted it, or did they just move there??

I recently heard there were several varieties of p.oak, and p.ivy. and also several look alikes???
last summer my kids got into poison ivy. one of them laid around in the house and complained the other went out, ran around, sweated his little hind end off. the one that went out and sweated was clear of the itchy in a couple of days.

The green leafy plant is astilbe the red shiny plant looks like poison ivy or a maple seedling. Either way the red shiny leafed plant should be pulled out to be safe.

Thank you for all the replies....I will let him know ASAP. And yep, they just bought a new house a few weeks ago and are just getting familiar with everything, so it might have been planted by previous owners.

The red stuff I will tell him to pull out.

And thanks Rachel....I will try peroxide. My crazy husband uses BLEACH!!! I hate when he does that...he scratches it open and dumps bleach on it....he's nuts. It works for him great, but he's crazy....I figured the nail polish would at least stop the little bumps from spreading and stop me from scratching them....I don't get it bad like Mark.....but bad enough that it itches like crazy.

I agree with Gardencrazy, Loz.

I think the main plant is astilbe, but the center shiney leaves look like poison ivy to me. The way I can tell, is that it does have "leaves of three (let them be!)", but it is not symmetrical - see how one side of the leaf is curved and the other side more jagged - that's poison ivy.

Here is my brothers response directly from the email he sent me back. He's very thankful.



Cool holy bat poop loz, that was fast!!!
Yeah I told Kasey last night that I wasn't sure about the majority of
it, but those small shiney leaves I REALLY thought looked like
poison...
Everytime I have seen poison it looks like its wilting...Like that
stuff...:):)
Thanks though I am amazed at how fast the responses were..:)

I'm just getting over a big painful boil - I went online and found a forum - a few people on there said Vicks was good - to put it on at night with a bandage or tissue.

Lo and behold the thing started draining!

Soooooooo ... maybe that will draw the poison out, after contracting 'poison ivy'.

Another thing ... I use a Burosol tablet for exzema . . . it works like magic. Dries it up immediately.

That might be good for PI.

Then again, maybe plain good old fashioned baking soda.