All,

Need help identifying if this is poison ivy/oak,etc. Location is on Brazos River and in sandy soil. There are around 4 to 5 trees that are down on the river bottom that I am leaving up for flood/erosion control but as I was mowing this weekend I noticed their leaves and it 3 leaves and has the look of poison ivy/oak but I have never seen it coming off a tree this size. The diameter of the trees are 8-14 inches and go up 20' high or so. Here are a couple of pics of the leaves and then one pic of the base of the tree with all of these shoots coming off of the tree with these leaves. Any help will be appreciated.

I'm not the best at these but the lack of the red stem and harry vines makes me think not poison anything.

But really I wanted to say nice user name.

Box Elder tree.

I am no expert but I believe it is poison ivy.

water snake, you can tell by the vertical lines at the jaw.

Second for Box Elder. It's very common to mistake it for poison ivy, especially when it's a sapling.

Wait, I remember this from another poison ivy ID thread.... you can tell it's not PI because the leaves don't radiate from a central point (I forget the correct term for this).

Someone now give me the correct run-down, or tell me I'm completely incorrect.

Thanks for replies. This is helpful as I did some quick googling and found the box elder and that it does like to grow on riverbanks and it is often confused with poison ivy. It appears that the two biggest distinctions is that poison ivy normally has some red on the vine and the leaves alternate off of the main vine whereas with box elder the leaves are directly across from each other on the vine.

Good to know the answer as the trees can stay. Thanks for the help.

The other key identifier is that usually the older box elder leaves will have 5 leaflets, while the newer leaves will have 3. Poison ivy only has 3 leaflets.

209 Aodad

AgEng06 said:

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Wait, I remember this from another poison ivy ID thread.... you can tell it's not PI because the leaves don't radiate from a central point (I forget the correct term for this).

Someone now give me the correct run-down, or tell me I'm completely incorrect.

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http://identifythatplant.com/poison-ivy-looks-similar-to-virginia-creeper/

A good explanation is at the link.

This should help with poison ivy ID.

These "is it poison ivy?" threads remind me of the same question I get with "is this snake poisonous?" My response is the same - best to get a closer look. But, to be safe, I'm gonna kill it first.

I am in agreement with others who have already posted on this thread. This appears to be a box elder tree (Acer negundo). Box elders are actually in the maple family, and if you take all three leaves and overlap them together, you will see it resembles a maple leaf!

Another teller in these pics is the opposite leaf arrangement. Poison ivy will have an alternate leaf arrangement around the stem while members of the Aceraceae (maple) family, like this box elder, you see stems symmetrically opposite from one another.

http://texastreeid.tamu.edu/content/TreeDetails/?id=5

You are good to be cautious of the three leaf arrangement though. Remember for poison-ivy, another money feature will be the hairy vine. "Hairy vine? No friend of mine!"

Texas A&M Forest Service is here to serve your tree ID questions! Visit our Trees of Texas website to start your next search when you come across an unknown tree or shrub.