On 23 February an errand took us down a small gravel road off County road #1 in Stormont Dundas & Glengarry County, a few kilometres south of Mountain, Ontario. Fred noticed a telephone pole with a Poison Ivy vine climbing up it right to the height of the wires, so on our way back out, we stopped to take photos and break off a specimen.
I have only seen the climbing kind of Poison Ivy a couple of times north of the US. Once on the Bruce Trail near Collingwood, and once in Toronto. The thing I find most sinister about Poison Ivy vines, is the way the stems are fastened tightly to the tree trunk (or telephone pole in this case) by dense red fringes of aerial roots with the kind of aggressive vigour that one would only expect in highly competitive and diverse tropical forests! This one had plenty of tufts of reddish rootlets embroidering its multiple grey vine stems to the pole, but the spookiest thing was the way that a few of the thickest stems emerged from the top of a metal tube that was fastened to the side of the pole. They filled the tube nearly to bursting and seemed to explode from the opening, reaching its several tips to nearly touch the telephone wires.
This vine must have been splendid with clusters of white berries this fall, as now every branch-tip is decorated with the delicate skeletons of bare fruiting stems. I took several photos. We will return to check it in the growing season.
Aleta – Several years ago, Don and I found a huge Poison Ivy vine near the end of one of the boardwalks on the Tallow Rock Bay trail at Charleston Lake. It was incredibly robust and climbed far up a tree right next to the boardwalk. It’s on the right – I believe it’s at the end of the second boardwalk, but perhaps the first (there are two long ones there).
Thanks, Bev! We’ll have to go out there to photograph and waypoint it for the database. We’d appreciate anyone elses’ sightings as well…
Look in the cache river here in Arkansas. Some are about a foot around. Also watch out for the ” devil’s walking stick” . It has thorns in excess of one foot long. Stepped on a twig from one. Ouch!
Hello Aleta – I just found this site with the link you sent about the otter pictures! Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I came across some climbing poison ivy in Maxville,in 2000 while conducting municipal drain assessments for fish habitat classifications. I was down a farm tractor path that goes south from county road 22 to check a tributary of the West Scotch River. The vine was climbing approximately 20 feet up a tree, which if I recall correctly was a sugar maple. I have a photo somewhere, if i can locate it i will send to you.