Relative Something

While walking through the woods yesterday with Cyndie and Asher, we decided to knock down as many of the broken and tipped trees and branches as we could reach and deal with using my pruning saw. Inadvertently, that ended up including freeing up some trees from the grip of vines as we came upon them. For as much energy we have put toward de-vining our trees over the years, it continues to surprise me to find how many we must have overlooked. In addition to that, there are plenty where vines were cut out previously but have resprouted, requiring another round of attempted eradication.

One common vine we have seen many times in the middle of the fully shaded woods grabs a firm hold on the bark and has a very impressive web of roots tangling great lengths across the forest floor.

Out of curiosity, I did some image searches for similar-looking vines on tree trunks, and to my surprise, the most common and repeated match identified it as poison ivy. Oops. Really?

I have a pretty good handle on identifying the three leaves of poison ivy plants and have never seen any greenery on these hairy vines on the trees, so I never connected the two. Also, I have never experienced a rash outbreak after messing with the vines in the woods, which surprises me since I react pretty easily when having contact with the low-growing plants in the sunny expanses around our property.

I consider myself lucky and will be giving these vines in the woods a little more respect when coming across them in the future. I will definitely be looking more closely for signs of the telltale leaves in the woods during the growing season.

Part of the problem probably stems from the fact that we don’t see very far into the thick woods off the trail during the growing season, and there are so many green leaves that we’re less likely to spot poison ivy leaves among all the others. Out on the edges where it grows in the sun, it is very easy to see.

While standing in the middle of a section of the woods off-trail yesterday, I spotted a curious pattern of young hornbeam (also called ironwood) trees that had sprouted around the trunk of a large poplar tree.

I am curious what led to this arrangement. The way the hornbeam trees are growing in something of a circle mimics the pattern of new growth after we cut down a tree, and the energy stored in the roots sends up a ring of new shoots around its circumference. Could something like that have happened here, and the poplar (a much faster-growing tree) just happened to emerge in the middle of them? I don’t really know what else to think, given my lack of education in the intricacies of tree species and their growth. Whatever, it is certainly an interesting sight.

Much more common and easy to identify are the numerous grapevines sprouting up from almost everywhere, but especially from places where we have cut them out before. That plant is VERY good at spouting new life from any fragments left in contact with the ground.

This time of year, before any leaves have sprouted open, is prime time for us to do vine hunting… again.

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