Bigger, Stronger Poison Ivy was originally published in the BFEC Newsletter, Vol. 16/No. 2, Spring 2012.
If, after your last horrible rash, you swore that poison ivy seems worse now then when you were a kid, you may have been right. Researchers at Duke University found that poison ivy growth increased by 150 percent when they piped extra carbon dioxide into an experimental forest plot, mimicking what some climate change models are predicting will occur in the atmosphere by 2050.
Not only did the plant grow larger, but the toxicity of the chemical compound within the plant that produces the rash, called urushiol, also increased. Researchers are predicting that woody vines including poison ivy will grow more rapidly, which could also be problematic for trees on which vines grow (news.nationalgeographic.com).
The good news is that poison ivy absorbs larger-than-average quantities of carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of the molecule in the atmosphere. And many animals do not share our aversion to the plant — birds eat its bright red berries, and deer, muskrat and eastern cottontail eat the leaves and stems.