I was doing some mulch work near my mailbox and pulled up a bunch of thin woody roots/runners from the soil. Cut them up with my shovel. There is a pine tree about 20 feet away, and poison ivy sometimes grows at the base of that tree, but I’ve never noticed poison ivy leaves actually coming up in the mailbox bed itself.
The roots I pulled were brown, woody, and had small feeder rootlets on them. Some larger tree roots were also in the area and I definitely hit some of those with my shovel.
My questions are:
1. From roots alone, do these sound/look more like ordinary tree feeder roots, or could they be poison ivy rhizomes/runners?
2. Can poison ivy underground runners realistically travel about 20 feet from where the visible plant is?
3. If I stepped on these roots and then walked on a bluestone walkway and into an unfinished concrete basement, how concerned should I be about tracking urushiol around? If someone walks that same path will they track it indoors?
I showered with dawn after about two hours when I was finished; hopefully that is enough.
by jsct01
6 Comments
I’m not sure. Are you allergic to it?
Those roots are probably from those pines/conifers.
If you’re unsure, proceed as though it’s PI. You have 10-30 minutes to wash the urushiol oil off your skin to avoid an allergic reaction. Use soap and vigorous sudsing, preferably with a paper towel or two. Then go wipe down what you touched with rubbing alcohol.
I’ve been pulling up poison ivy roots this afternoon and they don’t look like this!
Poison ivy roots are not as smooth as these are
Looks like pine root. Has similar bark like the trunk