Giant Hogweed, Look Out!!
General Topic
This stuff makes poison oak and ivy look mild
Wild Parsnip is another plant that leave really nasty burns on the skin as well.
Elk reaper got a bad case of that from cow parsnip last year I think that may be the same thing as hogweed.
I googlized it not the same thing but similar outcome.
That wild parsnip is really spreading in Wisc. Most people have no idea what it is.
Let`s plant this stuff all along the border.
I doubt it would help much to keep you guys from leaving, Franklin! ;-)
I used to do a bit of field work in Wisconsin and that wild parsnip is everywhere! Never heard of hogweed, but looks like a similar result. A couple co-workers got into the parsnip, but it was fairly minor. The Lyme disease and ticks scared me worse though.
They claim each episode will increase with contact. So your first couple of times may be mild but each occurrence after will become more severe. Almost like reverse immunity.
What's the latin name (genus/specie) for giant hogweed?
Lots of similar nasties out there to avoid.
To me, summer (east of the Rockies) sucks. Full of biting bugs, infectious weed, poison oak, and heat/humidity, and I seem to be skin-allergic to every kind of weed and bug there is. I itch all the time and live on Benedryl and Zyrtec. I love being outside constantly so I can't wait for Sept. and then winter. Everyone thinks I'm nuts for that. :)
Your not nuts Trapper.....I’m the same way!!!
Anyone else "immune" to poison ivy? I've been through it, in it, even grabbed it and never had a problem.
Poison ivy, poison oak doesn't matter, I don't get a reaction. My wife is the same. My neighbor at the lake on the other hand gets it plenty.
Shiras...as a kid, I would go to school every year, pink from the Calamine lotion. I would get it everywhere imaginable. If I even looked sideways at poison ivy, I would get it. Finally, about my senior year in high school, I stopped getting it. I went for about 10-15 years without getting it. Unfortunately, I started contracting it again several years back, but it doesn’t seem to spread nearly as bad as when I was young.
Scientific name: Heracleum mantegazzianum
I'm not allergic to poison oak or poison ivy, my brothers and best friend were though. It was great when we were kids running all over the hills, those guys suffered!
I'm the same as Ron, no effect on me whatsoever.
I'm also immune to poison ivy. I walked through a giant patch in shorts a few years back to test my theory. Zero reaction. I consider myself very lucky.
To me, poison oak is really bad, esp. in WA State, so poison ivy doesn't come close. I do get it though. Firemen I knew in WA used to get it fighting fires along the railroad tracks where the Poison Oak grows... hospital bound if you breathe it in. I have seen some giant hogweed around in a couple places in NY. Not touching it. I got a rash something like it once, probably wild parsnip that I unknowingly sat in on a mountain in the Adirondacks. I'd rather have that than deer flies, mosquitos, and black flies. My wife mentioned that putting would-be criminals and terrorists in a room full of deer flies would be a great way to get them to confess to crimes. Like waterboarding. I would take waterboarding over that any day. Back on topic, there is a huge patch of giant hogweed down the road, almost across from the little general store at the entrance of Westcott Beach campground on Lake Ontario near Sacketts Harbor. I called the state about getting it cut down and they apparently didn't act on it because it is still there every year.
LMAO.....^^^^^. I always thought the best way to get the Muslim terrorists to talk was to body wax them.....some of them look like a bear.
We have to start thinking outside the box.
My brother used to be a government spook essentially, full body waxing would have been kind he came out of that line of work a very different person.
Thanks KS. We have something very similar to this growing in the ditch across from our mailbox. I did cut a flower head off and also I leaf and I didn't get any negative reaction so I don't think it's Hogweed.
A word of caution to those of you who are "immune" to poison ivy. Years ago we knew a doctor who treated a lot of poison ivy cases. She informed us that some of us are allergic to it and some are not. If you're allergic to it you WILL know it because you will get it and most likely have been getting it since you were a kid and it can be VERY severe.
For the rest of us who are not allergic, we are born with varying amounts of resistance to poison ivy. Every time you're exposed to it you may not get a reaction, but you do use up some of your resistance. Eventually with enough exposure your resistance "bank account" get's "overdrawn", and then you will get it.
In my case I grew up working on a horse farm and then landscaping as well as spending every minute I wasn't in school or in the house doing chores in the woods and fields. I came in contact with it all the time. When I was about 23 years old, we were clearing a fence line that summer on the edge of a woods. It was a HOT day and I had my shirt off. 2 days later I had poison ivy rash from my chin to my waist as well as my arms and hands. OVERDRAWN!!! From that time on, if I come in contact with torn leaves or worse yet cut stems I will get it. Not real bad, as I know what it is and I get Dawn dish soap and scrub the hell out of my hands and arms.
It's the oil in the plant....Urushiol....that's the culprit. And it's in the ENTIRE plant, so you have just as great a chance to get in the dead of winter as you are when it's in bloom. The oil is also very persistent and can remain on tools/clothing and such for a long time. Several years ago I had an ax that I used to chop some limbs with. There must have been some poison ivy vines that we on those limbs, because ONE YEAR after I did that job, I went to use that ax again and it needed an edge touch up so I took a file and honed it up a bit. A day later I had a poison ivy rash on the heel of my hand where the file rested!
Was just going to same as Woods Walker. Even if you are immune to poison ivy don't come in contact with it. That immunity leaves. Ask me how I know.
Our horse shoer tells us that people who do that kind of work have trouble with poison ivy because if horses walk through it, the oil can get on the hooves and then when they trim/rasp the foot it get's all over everything.
I used to get it real bad. Got it a few times on me Johnson and the twins. Try walking around at school without scratching and once you dare start you can’t stop. I’ve said it here before that if you could bottle the feeling you get when you take a hot shower and scratch poison oak you could be a billionaire. Man that’s a crazy sensation. We had it on our property. I used anti perspirant deodorant on all exposed skin areas. Clogs your pours. I could cut it out and burn it. I eventually got immune to it.
Wild parsnip. This stuff is all over the place. You can’t see it in the pic very well, but there’s another one of my all time favorite weeds. Canadian thistle:-(
I used to have to get cortisone shots "in the buttocks" every year due to poison ivy. DL is right. That shower and scratch feeling hurts so good! I would use a knife and scratch it till it bled, then put the Johnson antihistamine with alcohol on it. Burned like crazy, but it would dry it out.
I am so glad I live in Montana now!!!! I traipsed around for hours picking huckleberries with the kids this past weekend in my shorts and flip flops with nary a care. Love it.
Ivy, Hogweed, sumac, oak, etc..... horrid stuff.
"Poison ivy, poison oak doesn't matter, I don't get a reaction. My wife is the same"
Be careful, I used to be the same. Then one year I cut my leg with the hand lopper I was cutting poison oak with. I guess the direct infusion into the flesh finally did it. It was a really bad case of it. It took 3 months for my leg to totally heal/clear of it. Now I get it by just being near it. Which sucks as my work has me clearing brush on a regular basis.
I had heard this before and this article confirms that the #1 workman’s comp claim is poison ivy.
Woods Walker is correct...scrub poison ivy rash with Dawn dish soap. The rash will heal quickly. I actually use Dawn as an ointment on an ivy rash. Just smear it on and don't rinse. The itch stops almost instantly for me. Dawn is the best. Giant hog weed...that is one evil plant. A friend just got a bad burn from petting a dog that must have been in it. Its the sap that causes the burn. The dog must have gotten sap on itself somehow. And if you get sap in your eyes, it can blind you so be super careful if weed wacking. Youtube has some decent vids on it. When mature, its easy to identify but its the young plants that scare me. They can easily be missed or misidentified. And there are 2 kinds of people...those who get poison ivy rash and those who haven't gotten it YET. I know a few. They used to laugh and brag that they didn't get ivy rash...until one day they did. Don't get cocky.
I used to get it BAD when I was younger. Worked for my uncle cutting and hauling firewood on his 13 acres in the summer. My mom used to say she would pay me not to work for him cause she spent more in dr. bills than I made in a summer. I would wear long pants and long sleeves with gloves and still get it. Got it so bad one time I had it literally head to toe. Just laid in bed for a couple days naked with not even a sheet covering me- could not stand the feeling of anything touching the skin. I even got it in the middle of Jan. one year cutting vines with a weed whacker with a rotary blade. Didn't realize the sawdust was hitting me in the face and neck and going down my back inside my jacket. Had to get a steroid shot cause my eyes almost swelled shut.
SInce moving to the Poconos 30 years ago I haven't gotten it much if at all. Think it is a combination of not as much poison oak and ivy up here and I'm beginning to think I have developed some immunity. Last couple years I have turkey hunted down near where I grew up. Got a few small patches of it on my arms but just enough I could tell it was poison ivy. Was gone in a few days. When I used to get it there was no doubt! I was bad for several weeks!
although I'm not gonna totally ignore it as when I was younger. but iv never had a reaction to poison ivy or oak. even used to go up trees covered with it with my climber
According to deerslayer’s link, stinging nettles are found over the entire North American continent, except for the state of Arkansas!
A friend of mines parents ranch is next to the Sacramento River. There’s a levee and typical flood plain willows and cottonwoods growing there. One day he saw some state workers planting something down there. He went to see what it was. POUSON OAK!! Everyone fights to kill it off their property and the state is out planting it! I do believe if we killed off mosquitos this state would raise and release them for fear of extinction. Since plants come under Fish and Wildlife’s jurisdiction I’ll bet hunters and fisherman were subsidizing this.
There was a patch of that giant hogweed in a park in western Mass. A couple people ran afoul of it, state had to go in and *carefully* remove it. 'Invasive species' suck.
I worked for years as a land surveyor and came in contact with poison ivy on a daily basis. Like some of you I was immune to poison ivy until I overdrew the bank. Then one time it got into my blood stream and I was a mess. It took shots of Prednisone steroids to beat it. It's not worth messing with!
