Oooh. It's been years since I've had poison ivy. Yesterday when it appeared it was a couple of red bumps and at first I thought they were bug bites. That's unusual, because bugs generally leave me alone, or if they bite me the bites don't itch. But the patches just below my left knee have persistently gotten itchier and blotchier and now it's apparent that these aren't bugbites.
I dragged a canoe around in the underbrush the other day, and might have gotten it then. I took the dog off leash on a windy trail yesterday, and sat in the woods near a stream reading my book in the dappled shade. Maybe I let a leafy vine tickle my leg when I was engrossed in the book.
There's a plant called diamondweed that you can rub on your skin right after you get exposed to poison ivy, and it neutralizes the itchy effect of the poison ivy oils, according to a botanist friend of mine. I tried to Google it to show you a picture (you've seen it before, it's everywhere, but you've never noticed it, I bet). Alas, both "diamond" and "weed" have lots of associated images, but no luck with diamondweed.
UPDATE: Valerie reminds me that it's jewelweed. There you go.
Also known as "jewelweed". As kids, we [erroneously] called the plants "snapdragons" because of the fun we had poking the seed pods to watch them explode. Hours of entertainment... :-)
Posted by: Valerita | July 17, 2006 at 09:36 AM
I would like to know what that cure plant looks like, i get poison ivy kinda too often.
Posted by: Charles | August 08, 2006 at 10:30 PM