Alrighty, I’ve told this story before, but it’s been about a year.
Now, understand that I am a camping and scouting veteran, a camp counselor, and an avid hiker; I know damn well what poison ivy looks like, along with every possible rhyme to remind a person.
Leaves of three let it be, red tint, it’s not difficult. I could spot the stuff from a mile away.
But this was a special occasion.
I was a brand new wildlife student, two years ago, facing for some reason my toughest challenge yet–Dendrology lab. We learned about 10-20 new trees every week in the field, and every week we were also tested on what we learned last class (along with their scientific names).
Memorizing Latin wasn’t an issue, but I was having notable trouble keeping up with identification (and we weren’t even into autumn yet, when the leaves are gone).
Now, when you’ve been doing something for years and years, it’s easy to sometimes overlook something odd, because you tend to fall into a habit of glancing and moving on, confident in your assessment, as long as the stakes aren’t enormous.
So this is a field quiz, no big deal. My professor is relaxed. He’s an impressive dude with a lot of knowledge, and he could probably about identify a tree blindfolded using some sort of echolocation known only to foresters.
So when he glanced at a small but particularly interesting poison ivy plant, he didn’t notice something crucial, which was its uncharacteristic leaf.
See, we were just a few classes into the semester, so we only knew about two trees with a very specific type of leaf called a “mitten lobe,” and those were Sassafras and Box elder.
Sassafras can actually produce three different leaves, the middle one in the photo being the mitten lobe (x):
So this poison ivy plant was not only growing out of the ground like a sapling, instead of as a vine or small shrub like we were used to, but it also had a mitten lobe as one of its few leaves.
I’m not sure if it was a mutated plant, or what exactly was going on, but this is not a normal thing.
Our professor missed it, but we were all hyper-analyzing this tree, because we were new to identification. So of course we all saw the mitten lobe and thought, well it’s either sassafras or box elder! We didn’t pay attention to ANYTHING else. It felt like some sort of trick question. The Mitten Lobe was the object of our entire, collective focus.
So, there are a few ways to tell sassafras and box elder apart. One method–in retrospect, the recommended method–being the branch alignment. This is THE most basic and first step to breaking down trees into possible identities. It’s where most people start.
And the other being the distinctive smell and taste of sassafras (if you crush a leaf, it smells a lot like fruit loops).
And how are a bunch of new, gung-ho students halfway through a test and eyeball-deep in stress going to decide on the difference?
We’re going to stick the leaf in our mouths.
So we all grabbed a leaf and tore it apart to share with our classmates and stuck the pieces in our mouths. Understand when I say not a single student knew the mistake we were making, because they absolutely would have interrupted the test.
Our professor was distracted, and we were all chewing slowly, as if at a wine tasting, mulling over the taste of the leaf and our options. It didn’t taste like sassafras, or like anything, really.
Which I said. Which is when our professor turned to me in horror and said “Molly Anne, did you just eat that leaf?”
I told him yes, and he was SO Plainly Horrified that I’m not kidding when I say half of the class–the half that hadn’t partaken in our cursed salad–immediately realized what we had done and put their pencils to their test to write in “poison ivy.”
Anyway, once it dawned on us our terrible mistake, a few things happened:
My professor asked us how we managed this, and we basically kept repeating “THE MITTEN LOBE” over and over again.
I called my mom, and she immediately said “you’re not doing well in Dendrology, are you?”
She went to Poison control for advice, and I had to break the news to my classmates that we were likely to break out orally and anally.
After the quiz, I went home for the day, and my professor called me twice to make sure I was alright.
I had never gotten poison ivy before, so I held out hope my apparent immunity would hold up for me in my darkest hour.
Although I wasn’t the only leaf-eater, I was the loudest and most dramatic in the aftermath (I found it hilarious), so I became known as the Only Fallen Dendrology Student in the incident.
When it came up in a lecture later that week, one of my professors laughed, “that was you?”
I am pleased to report that I did not break out. However, a few of my classmates weren’t so lucky and said they got it badly in their throat.
A week later, once of my classes toured an herb farm, and I asked to taste every single plant we saw, even when told “sure….you can…but it’s disgusting.”
Someone in my class couldn’t believe my dedication and said, “didn’t you just eat poison ivy like a day ago?”
Yes, I did.
EDIT:
I’m seeing people tag this like “don’t try this if you’re not experienced!”
?? ? ? ? Don’t?? Try this AT ALL?? At WHAT point in this story was there a takeaway of “hey go out and eat poison ivy to see what happens, but ONLY if you are in this field!!”
i'll apple your turnover 