I have actually tripped over a few stones looking for them and gave my knee a bad smack on one hiding in swamp brush,I Believe Guy fell over as tone once or it might of been Behr,I wasn't there but heard the story.
Cape May County Explorations
- Thread starter bobpbx
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That stuff makes me itch just looking at it. Al, do you mean you’ve never came across it growing naturally here other than Burlington county? I’ve always seen it growing in my parents yard their yard has always gone through cycles of getting over grown then cleared in spots then overgrown again. I am very very weak in the flora knowledge department but leaves of three leave it be, as well as the sumac are words I have lived by that’s for sure
Their yard may have sumac, and it may have poison ivy, but unless it's a high-quality freshwater wetland, it probably doesn't have poison sumac. (I was afraid of all sumacs and things with pinnately-compound leaves generally as a kid, not understanding this distinction.)
Ben I think you might be thinking of Poison Iv/Oak.Both grow in leaves of three.Oak as a free standing shrub and ive as a climbing vine.Leaf shape on poison oak is oak like.Poison sumac is a tree and it's compound leaflet has 13 to 17 leaflets.It looks nothing like ivy and oak but has the exact same poison urishiol.It tends to grow in swamps where oak and ivy can show up most anywhere but often not found in shrub packed barrens, possible being out competed by the Huckleberyy/Blueberry complex.I get poison very easy and have developed radar against it.My weakness is digging in creek banks for arrowheads where ivy grows overhead.The roots have worked me over a few times.,
Yes Burlington County is the only place in NJ I have seen it growing.Never went looking for it But was looking for a place to pee at an outside event and there were long lines at the porta potties so I headed for the woods.There were flood lights that just barely made it to the tree line and I figured I"d slip into the trees because I"m not a public peeist. I could smell swamp as I approached and noticed magnolia and Gum as i walked up.As I went to step into the trees some very shiny leaves caught my eye and then the smooth straight grey trunk about as big around as my arm and I recognized it from Book studies,sometimes being a nerd pays off you see. I said that is definitely not a pee tree,least not for me and I turned and gave it to the gum!The world may be our urinal but it always pays not to get cocky
That would be a bad place to get poison...ask me how I know...almost as bad as getting it around your eyesYes Burlington County is the only place in NJ I have seen it growing.Never went looking for it But was looking for a place to pee at an outside event and there were long lines at the porta potties so I headed for the woods.There were flood lights that just barely made it to the tree line and I figured I"d slip into the trees because I"m not a public peeist. I could smell swamp as I approached and noticed magnolia and Gum as i walked up.As I went to step into the trees some very shiny leaves caught my eye and then the smooth straight grey trunk about as big around as my arm and I recognized it from Book studies,sometimes being a nerd pays off you see. I said that is definitely not a pee tree,least not for me and I turned and gave it to the gum!The world may be our urinal but it always pays not to get cocky
I"ve had it there believe me,also in y eyes.I think I"ve had it everywhere at one time or another.had a friend who wiped his but with it once.Now I have never done that
Click on the photo, you can then zoom in. See if you still think it would be shortleaf.
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White Pine? I can't zoom in enough to count needles in a cluster and the tree doesn't have that layered white pine look to it. Perhaps Loblolly?
I can tell them from a distance when their big by their shape but I couldn't see this ones trunk.Never really looked at their cones.I was out west and I"ll tell you Ponderosa Pines are gorgeous.Very open pine forests with grass or sedge? under neath sorta like some areas here but the trees are all pink.Especially when low angle sunlight comes through the trees it's a forest of pink trees and green grass.
There is an area down here where there are some monster pines.I"ve always wondered if they were Pond pines,look like Pitch but their huge.Hard to get to too at the top of union lake.
I came upon an old dump in a nice wetland. People back then had no idea of protecting the environment on their minds.
Perhaps they knew we would come along centuries late and clean up their trash thinking it treasure? Think of all the stuff archaeologists have found in trash pits.
With all our perceived improvement in environmental sensibilities, I'm quite sure we send far more bad stuff to the landfills now than they tossed in the ground back then. Glass bottles in particular are pretty much inert and do little harm, as does most of the modern "litter" we pick up during clean-ups, being more of an aesthetic and symbolic issue than a major environmental one. Ask the pine snake living under a tire what he thinks about it. It's the stuff you don't see that is usually the most dangerous, as well as with habitat lost to over-development.