Dorothy,

No, not here at our house, and not after many years of hiking and camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts when our son was younger. For what it is worth, I have seen many boy scout leaders incorrectly identify Virginia Creeper as Poison Ivy and it drives me nuts. And I am talking about educated professionals, many of them with college degrees and with many of the men also having achieved the rank of Eagle Scout themselves as a youth. (sigh)

ANY body can be allergic to ANY thing. However, I am inclined to think that the woman in question just has her mind made up that she is right and you are wrong and that is that. With a person like that, you probably aren't going to convince her of the truth no matter what you do or say. When I get into this discussion with people, I remind them of the traditional saying is "Leaves of three, let them be." No where does it mention leaves of five. I also challenge them (nicely) to show me any legitimate reference material that identifies Virginia Creeper as a poisonous plant similar to Poison Ivy. No one ever has.

We have Virginia Creeper ALL OVER THE PLACE here on our 15 acres and it is simply lovely in the woods. I've planted it near the house where it grows as a ground cover under Southern Wax Myrtle and hollies. It comes up on its own in the veggie garden, undoubtedly planted by birds who've eaten its small fruit, and I pull it out bare-handed.

My best guess for why so much misinformation about Virginia Creeper is perpetuated is that it often grows WITH poison ivy....in our woods we have them growing so closely together that if you touch the leaves of one of them you are going to make contact with the leaves of the other one. So, I think some people may have made contact with Poison Ivy growing with Virginia Creeper and the Virginia Creeper was blamed even though it was the Poison Ivy causing the skin reaction.

We have a lot of unusual vines that I'd never seen in the wild until we moved here, including peppervine (Ampelopsis arborea), false grape (Ampelopsis cordata) and hairy cluster vine and Carolina Moonseed (Cocculus carolinus) and some people told me some of them were "poisonous" but none of us have ever had a reaction after making contact with them either. The only plant on our place that makes me break out and itch is the true, three-leaved poison ivy.

I think it is terrific that you have been sharing your garden and your gardening know-how with the interested children. It is a true shame that so many people (not just kids!) have completely lost touch with where our food comes from. There are a lot of adults who don't know which veggies and fruits grow on trees vs. vines vs. brambles, etc. I was showing cucumbers to someone one day only to be asked, somewhat incredulously, "You make pickles out of them?" Uhm, well, yes, you do. (sigh) I think many non-gardeners who come from a totally non-gardening background have no clue where food comes from prior to its arrival at the grocery store, and that it a shame.

I had to laugh at my DH the other day. (He's not really a gardener himself, although he gardened as a teenager and he knows a lot about gardening--guess I've rubbed off on him. He might be a gardener, though, if he wasn't so busy with his job and his volunteer fire chief duties. He does cheerfully eat everything that comes from our garden and totally supports and encourages my gardening efforts.) I have one artichoke plant that was the sole survivor of a row of them I planted in the spring of 2007. It is the only one that didn't drown in last spring's rains and, in fact, it didn't even freeze during the mild winter we had here. So, we were picking corn the other day and he said "Hey, you have artichokes!" (At least he knew what they were.) I think he wanted me to harvest and eat them, but I wanted to leave them and let them bloom. I guess next year I'll plant some again for harvest, using seeds collected from this year's plant. DH didn't say it, but I know he was thinking "Why plant it if you aren't going to eat it?" I really want the seeds though. LOL

Dawn

I have to laugh at this post. What makes me laugh is last summer we went to Tennessee to see the in-laws. I went in their garage and saw poison oak growing up the wall. I got to looking and noticed it everywhere!! Even on every electrical pole, every fence, EVERYWHERE!! Why wasn't the city doing something about all this poison oak? I was so alarmed I told my husband I had to kill it at the in-laws since they were very elderly and couldn't do it theirselves. Armed with a sprayer I covered every sprig I could find in two yards and the neighbors fence. She came running out screaming I was killing her vines. I tried to explain to her this was poison oak and I was on a mission to rid it as fast as I could. Well you guessed it, it was Virgina Creeper. I felt pretty stupid but the neighbor lady forgave me and I learned a lesson. But I still say it looks like poison oak, it certainly gets my attention when I see it.

Dawn, we have poison ivy and virginia creeper growing up the same trees too. I think that people just believe what they are told by older people like my charge did and don't ever take the time to confirm it with a good reference.

River22, at least you can laugh at yourself and you did learn. Like Dawn said, "Leaflets THREE, let it be" Dorothy

Poison Oak is only found on the Pacific Coast of the US and Canada. In full sun it is a shrub and can grow to be humongous - 25 ft tall and more! In the shade it grows as a vine, climbing up trees and other structures. Its leaves are large and rounded, with a kind of bubbly surface, closely resembling the leaves of certain species of oaks.

Poison Ivy grows everywhere else in the USA. It does not grow on the West Coast. It is a vine. It can get bushier if cut back, but it is still a vine. Its leaves are pointed and smooth.

Both are stoloniferous, as is Virginia Creeper.
All three reproduce by stolons and berries.
All three have colorful leaves in the fall.
All three make berries in the fall that are toxic to humans.

Poison Ivy and Poison Oak both contain 'urishiol', an oil that produces the contact dermatitis (skin rash). I am allergic to both plants.

Virginia Creeper contains a substance called 'oxalate crystals' that can cause contact dermatitis on some people. It is found on the vines (I believe).

We have V.C. growing on our brick house, along with English Ivy. My DH loves it and so do I. It is lovely year round - very cottagey, reminiscent of his childhood home in Scotland and mine in Southern California.

The VC is quite lovely in the fall - incredible colors until hard frost. We must keep it in check by pulling it down and cutting it back twice a year, every year, else it will grow up into the attic and run amok! We don't mind the extra work. It shades the house in summer and holds in the heat in winter.

Occasionally when we pull down the vines, it does make a rash on my arms. It eventually goes away after I wash with soap and water, but perhaps it might be a more severe for some people.

However, I think it is very likely is that she feels jealous and/or threatened by you, your family, your home, your gardens and the influences of your education and lifestyle on her grandchild, even though you feel they are positive ones. It threatens her position with her grandson in her own family if she might be suddenly perceived as ignorant in his eyes. She may also resent your "funny California ways".

We moved to this little town many years ago. We live outside of town, but we are a part of the community. I try to be active in community projects and activities, scarce as they are. However, even though it is a little Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, few people here are truly ignorant. Even the farmers have college educations. There are folks with PhD's, teachers, scientist, business people, social workers, government employees, college students, oilmen, cattlemen, horse ranchers, oilfield workers and those in oil related industries; cowboys, mechanics, welders, accountants, realtors, plumbers, electricians, bakers, carpenters, painters...doctors, lawyers and yes, even Indian chiefs! You name it. There are a number of people from other countries as well.

So I found it very odd when I was told by a local farmer/businessman that I do business with on a regular basis that "We don't like people coming here from California with their funny ways of thinking and doin' things...tryin' to change the way things are done and how we live." I asked him if he was referring to me. He shuffled his feet in the dirt and grinned and said, "Well, if the shoe fits..."
Well, I was taken aback.

I told him that I was both a Southern California girl and an Okie. My mom's family were CA pioneers since 1853, and my dad's family made the OK Land Run in 1893! I've lived in both states (and more than ten years in Louisiana as an adult), and love all three states for different reasons. I have learned to appreciate the different cultures and ways of doing things. But I told him that I am also a "child of the 60s and 70s" and have developed some of my own ideas about life and what I feel is & is not important and that these were not necessarily a product of one state or the other.

So, I asked him just what it was that I was doing that was so strange, and why he thought I was trying to change the way people here do things or live? He couldn't tell me just what it was I was doing or how he thought I threatened local or Oklahoma culture in general, but he felt that I was nonetheless! However, after we talked a bit, he simmered down. I gave him a little more background info (to vindicate me or to hang me with) about my family and of my childhood years spent on route 66 going back and forth from one state to the other. He told me he could see how I might feel about both states and all.

They still see me as a bit "differ'nt", but I (think) we have become more accepted locally. We've lived in this community for 12 years now, and we like it and most of the people in it.

It is important to be sensitive to other people's feelings and attitudes and we try to be, but we also hold the same right for ourselves.

There may be many (other) reasons for the grandmother's attitude with you, but thought I would share my experience with you.

~ CalifOkie Annie

My guess is that your small friend talks about you to his grandmother ALL the time! She's probably sick to death of hearing about "Dorothy this and Dorothy that".

When my son was a teenager, he got very close to the parents of his best friend. I admit, I was threatened. I could tell him something and it would go in one ear and out the other. But let them tell him something -- sometimes the SAME thing I had told him -- and he's like soakin' it up! I got to the point where I really didn't like them very much. I saw them as people who thought they knew everything and it hurt that my son valued their opinions more than he did mine.

It sounds like your young friend's grandmother is telling you, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it!" She's not going to want to back down in front of her grandson.

I kinda know what those farmers are talking about. Bartlesville has changed considerably since I first knew it. I remember in the 60's making the acquaintance of a fellow who drove to Bartlesville from New York. All he could do was go on and on about the vast "wasteland" that he had crossed to get there and how there wasn't anything to do in Bartlesville for someone "of his caliber".

In the years since, Bartlesville has built an expensive community center. We had one already but we were all told it was old and unsafe. The fact was that it was old and kind of ugly. So they tore it down, and they had a terrible time with it. It just wouldn't fall down! They let the library expand into the area where the community center was, and they built the new community center up the block. Oh, it's nice. They commissioned a sculpture at both the community center and the library. They were very expensive and, I think, kind of ugly. They paid for a very expensive computerized sign at the community center. Mostly the community center is used by people who came here from somewhere else. It's for concerts and other functions that most of the locals wouldn't be caught dead at. Once in awhile they have a country band concert there, but the acoustics are for symphony.

We all, however, share in the expense of this undertaking, through the city sales tax, utilities, and taxes on our homes. In that respect, as someone who grew up in nearby Copan and who lived in Bartlesville for twenty years, I somewhat resent people who come here from New York or Baltimore or whereever, and they look down their noses at us and how we live. You'd think, if they hated it so, they'd move on. But they don't. They get involved in city politics and before you know it, they're trying to pass a multi-million dollar tax grant to get an olympic-sized swimming pool and a bunch of other expensive unnecessary things built at the school. They've had fancy homes built here because none of the existing homes are lavish enough. And most of the better jobs are filled by the family of some executive who are working "to have something to do". I miss the way things used to be.

For whatever reason, Virginia Creeper is very commonly mistaken for poison ivy. I remember seeing a poster with pictures of both plants in a hall at a Girl Scout camp I attended as a child. It was there to teach us how to recognize poison ivy correctly so we could avoid it.

One summer my girls went to stay a few weeks with my parents who lived on property north of Ada where my step-dad had grown up. Both of them came back covered, and I mean literally head to toe with poison ivy rashes! One of them even had it in her ears! It was so bad the doctor wrote a prescription for half a pound of hydrocortisone cream, and not a single pharmacy in town even had that much on hand to fill it!

I found out later from my brother-in-law that, in spite of having grown up on a farm, my step-dad did not know how to recognize poison ivy and instead would take out all the Virginia Creeper.

Dorothy, I wouldn't worry about the grandmother. In my opinion, if you want to have your children/grandchildren respect your opinion and believe what you say then you should work harder at getting it right, and she's obviously wrong about the vine. No one is ever going to be right absolutely all the time. We will all make mistakes at some point, and when that happens with a child around it simply means you've been handed a golden opportunity to not only teach them that all humans err, but to teach the really important part which is how you handle yourself and the situation when you find out you're the one who's wrong. Those are the kinds of lessons that earn us the greatest respect, and the ones kids remember long after they're grown. I feel sorry for her that all her high level education didn't make her smart enough to see that so instead she missed the chance to have something really very special with her grandchild.

Thanks for your replies. Sweetannie, if you react to the vine perhaps she does too, even if she was wrong about its identity. Having lived on the west coast, I too used to think that poison oak only grew on the west coast, but the guide to vines of Arkansas lists it as occuring in Ark and I have seen it in the mts of Colorada.

Devilwoman, you are a very wise woman. I have always tried to "get it right" before passing info on to children and grandchildren and when challenged have been sure to confirm. I was just really shocked and hurt to hear this little girl repeat her grandmother's words. I would never think of defending my position with such a statement about someone else and must admit that my respect for the woman has been diminished to know that she did. And I feel sorry for her because the child is very bright and eventually she will figure out that "believe me because I'm smarter" isn't a logical defense of a position, and she too will lose respect for her grandmother. Dorothy