Is this poison ivy?

Here's the photo, for others:


Unfortunately, yes, that looks like poison ivy.

I've dealt with it, it's not fun.

If you want to deal with it yourself, I recommend that you get long rubber gloves and some Tecnu:

http://www.teclabsinc.com/store/poison-oak-ivy/tecnu

Also wear clothes you wouldn't mind tossing.

Then you can proceed in a few ways.

One is to just tear it off of the tree. Depending on the size, that can work fine.

A vine going up the tree that much probably has a corresponding vine/ root system that you'd also have to find and dig up. If the ground is saturated, this can be relatively easy. If the ground is dry, it's harder.

I'm just here for a minute so will leave things there for now, let me know if you have any questions so far.

looks like it, yes...



other suggestions for removal
http://poisonivy.aesir.com/view/control.html

Are the leaves shiney? I can't tell from the pix. virgina creeper looks a lot like poison ivy.

Error on the side of caution and be careful.

I have been calling the stuff in my yard poison oak. But I see now that it is poison ivy. I have tried digging out the roots, used poison that promises to kill the whole plant and just mowed over it. Nothing really slows it down so far.

one word solution, ed...

goats.

Are you certain a goat would eat poison ivy? No matter. We are not allowed livestock here.

they love it.

put a collar on it and call it a dog...

a stinky dog with horns.

It would be nice if I could rent one. By the time the neighbors become irate I might not have a problem any more.

You have to get the whole thing -- like, not just some of the roots but the whole entire root system.

If there is any poison ivy at all it will probably return just because of why it showed up in the first place -- nearby plants + birds transporting seeds, etc. So new little plants will probably show up later even if every trace is eradicated. But you should be able to just pull those up pretty easily, when they're little.

Punkey is right that virginia creeper can look like poison ivy, at least some of the leaf groups should be five and not three though in that case. All of the leaves I saw in the photo were groups of three, which makes me think it's probably not virginia creeper. But worth looking at the whole vine just in case.

The roots run in an extensive complex under there. I have dug at many until I could find no more root. About a week later I would go out and see new growth where I had been digging. I would repeat the process, again and again. To no avail. Today, the poison ivy is as thick as ever back there and I just mow over it.

I know you've had a problem with drought. The only thing that really worked well for me was waiting until the ground was really saturated -- after a few days of rain is perfect -- and then feeling along a specific poison ivy plant until I reached the motherlode (the long undergound vine feeding individual plants) and then pulling.

The awesome part is I'd see poison ivy plants disappearing into the ground along the way. (Like, 20 feet away, then 17 feet away, then 14 feet away, etc.)

Then I'd haul out a very long, dirty, dangerous mess of poison ivy.

I tried all this before the drought, about three years ago. Our soil is pretty sandy. You would think those big roots would come up pretty easily, but I have never been able to to do a total job on a single one of them.