The other tell is 3 leaves. From memory (so maybe wrong), they aren't hairy, but do have a slightly broken edge (can be smooth, but can have a little but not a lot of variation).
We live in the woods and there's poison ivy around. I try and mark the obvious stuff with some spraypaint, but if you go for a hike you could probably come across some.
I just tell people "leaves of three, leave it be" and leave it at that.
You can get into whether the branches alternate on the stem, the exact shape of the leaf, whether the middle leaf has a longer stem than the two side leaves, etc... But in my experience it's just way easier to have people avoiding the handful of plants in your area that are safe but could be confused (for us it's pretty much just boxelder) than trying to play botanist and determine exactly what's gonna ruin their entire month.
Unless you _really_ need to differentiate or you live in an area where there's a _lot_ of other three-leaved plants... just avoid the three-leaved plants.
tkanarsky|3 years ago
is what I learned in Scouts
nucleardog|3 years ago
I just tell people "leaves of three, leave it be" and leave it at that.
You can get into whether the branches alternate on the stem, the exact shape of the leaf, whether the middle leaf has a longer stem than the two side leaves, etc... But in my experience it's just way easier to have people avoiding the handful of plants in your area that are safe but could be confused (for us it's pretty much just boxelder) than trying to play botanist and determine exactly what's gonna ruin their entire month.
Unless you _really_ need to differentiate or you live in an area where there's a _lot_ of other three-leaved plants... just avoid the three-leaved plants.
zikduruqe|3 years ago