The Gazette’s June 26 edition has a useful Associated Press article about recognizing and removing poison ivy plants. I offer some helpful detail for identifying the plant. Hold your hands forward, palms up. Separate your thumbs from the other fingers. The “mitten” shapes represent notches that very frequently appear on the outside of the plant’s lateral leaves. Now separate your index fingers from your thumbs and middle fingers. Sometimes the plant's lateral leaves have two notches, like your hands are now. If so, then the middle leaf will likely have symmetrical notches on both edges. When near a wooded area, poison ivy often favors the edge of the open area where it meets the treed area of low light, e.g. along the bike path east of the Coolidge Bridge, as well as the rich growth not far from the Federal Street entrance to the path which runs along the Mill River from Paradise Pond to Federal Street. Reminder: these leaf patterns are reliable when you see them. They can be absent.

Norman Spencer

Florence