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Five leaves next to three leaves

Subject: Five leaves next to three leaves
Author: JB
Date: 7/10/2006 8:00 am
Views: 7144
Status: Approved
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I have a bunch of 12" - 18" free-standing plants in lightly wooded areas in Ontario with 3 leaves that look exactly like many of the confirmed poison ivy pictures I've seen on this web site. What's confusing is that they're usually mixed in with a number of other plants that look identical, except that these have an extra set of 2 leaves down the stem from the 3-leave cluster). So, wherever I see 1 variety, I usually see the other variety right there too. Furthermore, I know there's poison ivy somewhere, because I've encountered the rashes. That leaves me to wonder which of the following scenarios are likely to be the case for me:

a. The 3-leaf plants are poison ivy, and luck has it they're mixed in with an imposter plant that has 5 leaves (any clue what this plant is -- you can't tell it apart from the 3-leaves without counting leaves)
b. The 3-leaf plants are possibly imposter plants -- they probably grow the extra 2 leaves as they get older
c. Both plants are poison ivy
d. Who the heck knows?

Whaddaya think?

SubjectAuthorDate
Five leaves next to three leav (Approved)JB7/10/2006 8:00 am
  Re: Five leaves next to three (Approved)sammy7/11/2006 11:16 pm