Hi all, About half the people (gardeners and neighbors) I have asked "know" this is poison ivy, and the other half "know" it isn't (oddly enough, nobody is unsure of themselves but me). Despite the 3 leaves, I tend to think it isn't poison ivy...but I'm not sure enough to just go rip it out myself, either! *laugh* Can anybody tell me for sure what it is? If it matters, I'm in Northern Virginia. Pics here Thanks, Bill
Absolutely not. It's a member of the genus Rubus (includes raspberries and blackberries). It might be possible to ID to species, but eastern North America is the centre of diversity for the genus, so there are many different possible species. The USDA PLANTS database is a great resource to track this down, but their server is extremely slow at the moment, otherwise I'd check through a few of the common Rubus in there.
Thanks for the quick response - I don't think I need to know the species. :) Are the little thorns a quick way to tell that it's not poison ivy? Somewhere I read that PI never has thorns, but can't find where that was.
Well, botanically speaking, they're not called thorns on raspberries, but rather prickles - but yes, that is one thing that differentiates them. The leaf margins on this plant are serrate (finely toothed with the teeth pointing forward) as opposed to poison ivy, which will be either entire, lobed or slightly toothed (like in the images on this page: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/graphics/...perms/dicotyledonae/anacardiaceae/Poison Ivy/ )
I have never seen any with thorns and I have it all over the border of my property. That looks like a wild blackberry vine, I have that all over the place too. I hate those things. We have a ton of them in some areas of the edges of our property. It crawles into all kinds of bushes and will choke them out good if you dont get control of them. To top it off it gets MUCH thinker and harder. Spikes get much bigger as well. Good Luck with that!! lol
i think Daniel is right. this can be Rubus fruticosus. most probably this is the wild Rubus variety. we call it bramen. in summer, we go near the railroad where we pick out lots of bramen, and the "thorns" can be vicious.
