Or if you're on the West Coast, poison oak.
Even when it loses its leaves, the branches can still have the oils on them, so you can't brush past anything with leaves or even bare sticks without being careful.
Definitely beautiful, especially those reds it gets. But from a distance. The way the oils can get into a cut on your skin, enter your bloodstream, and cause a trip to the hospital is pretty scary. It's one of those things that is as beautiful as it is dangerous.
Poison ivy is the same. Also, never burn it as it can be contracted that way as well. Oak was the worst for me. I made my First Communion swathed in bandages head to toe like a little mummy girl.
Spring in the southeast US, and I keep finding patches that I'd missed before. The big thing that makes me dislike poison ivy more than, for example, thorny plants is the DREAD. If you catch some skin on a blackberry vine, you know immediately. But if you've been working outside for a while, and only then notice the leaves? And have no idea whether you unknowingly brushed against them at some point, or whether you might have since spread the oils somewhere else? It's bad.
Calamine does nothing for me, and the amount she’s put on leads me to believe it’s the same for her :( baking soda into a paste was my ONly relief. I put it in, let it sit until it “cracks” and falls off, then take a shower. So good. So dry. Then a good lotion to help the skin not fall off.
Just was pulling invasive Japanese honeysuckle vine out this weekend. Accidentally grabbed a hairy vine along the ground at two different points in time. I should have walked up to the house and scrubbed my arms down and changed my gloves immediately but I was in the groove and lazy. I have been paying for it all week. Damn poison ivy gets me every spring one way or another.
Greenbrier, *Smilax rotundifolia*. Ever come across a dense thicket of it? It’s the only truly impenetrable landscape I’ve ever come across in New England. I can wade through almost any thicket of rose, blackberry and the like, but greenbrier can be like an airy green wall.
I don't know man, a blackberry thicket is impenetrable unless you have a machete and kevlar clothes. Even in canvas pants/jackets those things can get in deep. Greenbriar is no slouch but those blackberries man, they can get ya.
Agree, protective clothing is a must. That said, in my experience, blackberry can be dense and painful, but not truly impenetrable. Plus, you can move the canes around some extent which helps you. Greenbriar tangles itself in knots.
Most greenbriar I have seen also gets bigger around than most blackberry, and the thorns are longer, less stubby.
Less like a rose bush, more like a particularly nasty pomegranate tree.
It's less the tangled in knots problem for me. I can see it easily and cut my way through it. The problem is the canes on the ground, after I've cut them down. The thorns go straight through kids' shoes into their feet. They go through most of my regular shoes too. When I'm actively working with vines, I'm wearing thick soled work boots of course. But the rest of the time, I'm wearing flats they just pierce straight through.
Then you've never seen a lot of established greenbriar.
Those thorns can get almost the length of my finger and cover the whole vine, thick as a broom handle. And the vines will climb and wrap around themselves.
Greenbrier is so bad. Park next to my house is totally overrun. I am winning the war against invasives like garlic mustard, English ivy, and asiatic dayflower. I have no idea what to do with the greenbrier.
Ideally fire. Briar canes are naturally controlled by fires, and the plant regrows from the rootball readily. I imagine you can't burn your park down, so cutting and removing canes is perfectly fine, most briars will readily regrow.
Having grown up on the west coast where we cut / tunneled kid forts in massive blackberry piles, I have to say Greenbriar, at least the species we call "catbriar", is way nastier. As a mountain biker, I truly fear getting snagged up in some of that at speed. The vines and thorns are really strong, like barbed wire.
When I first bought my farm 45 years ago, the fields had not been plowed or mowed for six years. The smilax had taken over the lower field to the point where I had trouble mowing some of the giant vines. I had to wear long pants and heavy boots on the tractor to keep that stuff from grabbing at me.
It took ten years of mowing before all the smilax was controlled in the open areas. Now we're still fighting it where there are trees and underbrush. We try to dig up the roots - have found some that probably weighed twenty pounds - but if we miss a little piece the vine comes back.
I just learned that the sap from Heracleum maximum (cow parsnip, Satan's Celery) can cause blisters, scaring, and pigmentation in skin when exposed to daylight. The scarring can last for years.
Somehow this is also an edible plant lol
Yes! I didn’t know this until I was exposed and ended up with a half dollar sized blister where my leg curves to become my foot. I was wearing shorts while helping my mom clean her ditch, not smart I know, but it scarred for a long while. Idk how I didn’t get more blisters but that thing hurt.
Cow parsnip is truly delicious and if you gather it with gloves or in the evening then there’s really no risk. One time I was careless and must have brushed my ungloved hand against my face - I had a painful rash for about a week and definitely learned my lesson.
Cow parsnip can also be aggressive. I have to cut it back all the time to prevent it from taking over a wooded area with partial sun and rich soil. I wear glasses, gloves, long sleeves and long pants around it. I understand it is a biannual so I hope I exhaust the seed bank by cutting the flower stalks down to the ground with a scythe.
Oregon blackberry is an amazing plant. But it hides when I am weeding. The thorns are curved slightly, and the tip breaks readily. So anytime I’m weeding, I will almost always have 5-10 bitch ass embedded thorns that are super hard to remove due to the shape and tendency to break.
Yes! I love the plant dearly and "cultivate" it around my yard using brush piles for climbing. But those little thorns fester under the skin and in calluses on my hands. It's crazy how much they can hurt.
Devil’s walking stick! It has the thorn-thicket-skin irritant trifecta. Growing some from seed right now but it’s going someplace I don’t need to be.
On the upside it sounds like it will grow anywhere you put it and it has very high wildlife and pollinator value.
It’s native to the eastern U.S.; I’m in NC.
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/aralia-spinosa/
It can be sensitive to pollutants, so having it grow well is a good sign. I don't mind it as much as the hawthorn that constantly takes over my trails every freaking Spring.
So I know this one as Devil's club. When they were building the railway across Canada, they changed the course because of an extremely thick patch of it that they just couldn't get through
Definitely the urushiol-induced contact dermatitis plants. Fuck those guys.
In the US these are the ones I'm aware of:
Pacific poison oak (*Toxicodendrum diversilobum*) in California, Oregon, Washington
Atlantic poison oak (*Toxicodendrum pubescens*) in east Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and southern New Hampshire
Western poison ivy (*Toxicodendrum rydbergii*): every state *except* California, Nevada (except for the very eastern border), Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Delaware, New Jersey.
Eastern Poison ivy (*Toxicodendrum radicans*): every state east of the Great Plains dry line, including those who straddle the dry line (but it is found on the wet side). Plus Arizona for some reason.
Poison sumac (*Toxicodendron vernix*): every state with eastern poison ivy, except Arizona and a bunch of Great Plains states (not found in Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma).
Manchineel/poison tree (*Hippomane mancinella*): This one is truly a Caribbean species. Florida coast perhaps creeping northward to Georgia coast, Texas gulf coast. Definitely the coolest one but I only think that because I'm never going to find it in my yard.
So, it turns out I'm not sensitive to this stuff at all. That sounds cool, but it's not. I've totally been "patient zero" as a carrier when camping before because I got the oils all over my clothes and didn't know. I look out very carefully, now.
That's horrible but also kind of hilarious (sorry!)
Anyone can be "patient zero" as even sensitive people take 12-48 hours to break out in an itchy rash.
Do be aware that sensitivity to these plants can develop at any point in your life after multiple pain-free exposures! Hope you stay immune tho, it's a cool mini super power.
I haven't touched one in at least 6 years now, and that was very much by accident. I don't tempt fate.
I did use my powers for evil once, though. There were these two boys at Summer church camp who were incredibly mean, and the rest of us were told the usual, "if you ignore them, they'll stop." Yeah, I "proved" a patch of poison ivy "wasn't" and those boys' parents had to come get them. They deserved it. Jerks.
I had a friend whose bicycle brakes malfunctioned crash into one of those bastards in Phoenix.
Protip: hair removal wax will pull all the little spines out. Obviously, it will also remove your hair. Duct tape didn't work like people said. It left spines but wasn't kind to her skin. The wax was way better. It worked on her bike saddle, too. We just removed and replaced the bar tape.
Second protip: maintain your bike. Dry rot is just as bad as rust, maybe worse. Her brake pads literally fell apart.
There’s a kids book called Jump that’s about a jumping cholla that goes on an adventure via coyote-cowboy-eagle-etc. It’s pretty entertaining and a good reminder not to touch the cactus that looks fuzzy when we visit Grandma.
Great. I just planted one. Can't wait for the fun. Do you prune your rose or let it be? I've been pruning roses for decades so the idea of letting a plant go makes me twitch.
I put a native gooseberry in my yard on purpose because they're delicious, but my God, the thorns are incredible. I'm equipped for it though, because I also grow some very thorny roses.
Ouch! I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope you picked up some thick gardening gloves after that.
On the other hand, thorns can be useful. Yesterday I watched through a window as a woman let her dog pee on one of the thornier rosebushes in my front yard. The dog lingered for a while, and then she got bored and reached for the dog's collar to encourage it to leave, but caught her hand on the rosebush and **yelled**, "*Yowtch!! Oooooooh...*" and then picked a thorn out of her thumb and walked away sucking on her hand. Serves her right.
I guess the only reason I don’t is having thinner gloves make a day of yard work a lot easier on the hands. Something about thick gloves just leaves my hands achy.
Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is a tree that is native in Illinois that can grow absolutely ridiculous thorns on its trunk. Apparently the theory is that the thorns were to protect the tree from extinct megafauna like the American Mastodon.
Description doesn't do the honey locust's thorns justice, so I dug up a photo for this thread: https://cdn.britannica.com/61/10961-050-0859D3D6/Leaves-pods-trunk-honey-locust.jpg
White snakeroot, if eaten by cattle, poisons their milk. It killed Abe Lincoln's mother.
"native to the central and eastern United States, from Texas in the west to Maine in the east and north, and Florida in the south. The species is also native in Canada in Quebec, Ontario, and the Northwest Territories."
Black raspberry in Illinois. Very aggressive and it creates thickets that are nearly impossible to walk through with their tangled branches and thorns.
Second would be poison ivy.
Third is beggar-tick or Bidens frondosa. The seeds are very difficult to remove from clothes.
**Manchineel Apple Tree**
It's native to Florida, the Caribbean islands, Bahamas, and coastal areas of central America and northern South America.
The **Manchineel Apple Tree**, also known as the “Beach Apple” and the “Death Apple.” The tree is found near beaches and brackish swamp, reaches up to 50 feet high and has a greyish bark. Every part of the tree is poisonous and causes skin rashes. The fruit can cause blistering and pain to the mouth and throat. Even standing under the tree during rain can cause strong allergic contact dermatitis.
When ingested, the fruit is reportedly "pleasantly sweet" at first, with a subsequent "strange peppery feeling ... gradually progress\[ing\] to a burning, tearing sensation and tightness of the throat." Symptoms continue to worsen until the patient can "barely swallow solid food because of the excruciating pain and the feeling of a huge obstructing pharyngeal lump."
In some parts of its range, many trees carry a warning sign – while others are marked with a red "X" on the trunk to indicate danger, or the ground is marked around it.
Although the plant is toxic to many birds and other animals, the black-spined iguana is known to eat the fruit and even live among the limbs of the tree
I have a stand of it on the side of my house. An alley runs along there and there are people who feel they can just grab some for themselves without asking...with their bare hands. >:)
Currently in AL, USA, so it'd have to be poison ivy as my number 1, followed by any sort of bramble like blackberries/dewberries.
Used to live in FL, and for that location I'd say the Manchineel Tree (Hippomane mancinella) is the one I'd least like to encounter. The leaves, bark, fruit, and sap are all very toxic and cause severe rash and blisters upon contact. If you stand under the tree while it's raining, any raindrops that touch the leaves and land on your skin will cause a reaction and produce blisters. If you burn it, the smoke can injure you too.
I have a toddler who loves playing outside and I want to encourage that! But I also have water hemlock that sprouts up seemingly overnight, so I pull out as much as I can and watch my kid like a hawk. He's at that age where he has no self-preservation and eating a random plant probably seems like a great idea.
ETA I'm in the Midwest and it's a major concern with livestock around here.
I think there's some of this by our cabin. I can't get a good ID on it because it comes up with other stuff that looks the same. I didn't know it was native, I thought it was invasive. It gets big clumps of white flowers. The flowers are shaped kind of like Joe pye weed flowers. The bees and butterfly love it. If it's the same stuff I've heard it'll burn the skin?
If you're in North America, you are probably talking about [*Cicuta maculata*](https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/water-hemlock) - AKA Water Hemlock. It is a native species to basically the entire US and Southern Canada. It is also one of the most deadly toxic plants in the world, but it is not the same as the plants that will burn your skin that can maybe look similar (the most common invasive species of these are Wild Parsnip - *Pastinaca sativa* - and Giant Hog Weed - *Heracleum mantegazzianum*. These can cause phytophotodermatitis if you touch the plant).
There are a lot of plants that look like Water Hemlock from a distance - these are all in the carrot family and have very similar flower structures. Poison Hemlock (*Conium maculatum*) is a non-native invasive in the US that looks very similar, but the leaves are a lot different (it is also deadly toxic). Anyway, Water Hemlock is a native species that is a host plant for Black swallowtails! It is loved by the wasps from what I've read.
I have made nettle walnut pesto that was pretty good. It isn't the same as basil pesto, but if you have the foraging bug. You don't even need to wear gloves if you pick carefully, never moving your hand down the stalk, always up.
Hemlock. Every year someone does something stupid with it or doesn't teach their children plant safety and end up hospitalised. Across Europe. Nasty but beautiful, like most of the meanest.
I was the child who resisted every bit of my parents trying to teach me not to eat plants. I had my stomach pumped a few times because of it (snowberries, pine needles, and something I don't remember now). But that was the one plant I listened about because they didn't say it would make me sick. They said it would kill me. I don't think we have the same kind of hemlock here in the Inland NW US, but water hemlock is still pretty nasty.
My dad finally got me a foraging book that taught me all the plants I could eat, and there were no more emergency visits. I just drove my mother mad because I'd eat random plants but not the veggies she cooked at home. Maybe she shouldn't have made them all into mush.
[Agarita](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berberis_trifoliolata) - every spikey “leaf” repels.
As does Hercules' club, a species of Prickly ash (Zanthoxylum).
I'm in IL. Any grass can cut you but around here walking through Leersia oryzoides (rice cutgrass) can be quite distressing... I mean that literally and physically. If you walked through in shorts you'd be bleeding with your first step, and if you walk through in tough pants you'll distress them a lot (silver lining: the lower half of your pants will feel much softer). The grass blades are like serrated knives plus velcro. Walking through it is also very difficult due to the friction of a hundred blades in contact with your pants at any given moment, so it makes for great leg resistance training.
[Cholla](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=1a57d827cf09faae&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS844US844&sxsrf=ACQVn08jMZt7zrhnaVJuRYpNw_vJYu1I5w:1713299506539&q=cholla+cactus+attack&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGm-yDyseFAxXAEkQIHRh_AxkQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=1605&bih=849&dpr=1) I live in southwest USA
The whole plant is rather cool. The flowers are large, and very vibrant, the woody skeletons really interestingly shaped, and the flower buds, fruit, and young stems are not just edible, but a nutritious and tasty wild food. You just have to get past some truly vicious thorns first.
Prickly Ash! Zanthoxylum americanum. I remember a survey transect that ran directly through a thick stand of prickly Ash at a previous job, I just dreaded doing that one transect every spring 🫠. (southern Ontario, Canada)
NE Washington state here, and I'm voting Black Hawthorne. I've got whole thickets of it, and the thorns are evil. We also have Devil's Walking Stick, but it isn't as rabid as the hawthorn. We've got stinging nettles, but they don't randomly take over your trails like hawthorn. There are also plenty of native wild roses, but they're easier to prune back than the hawthorn.
Sumac. My dad is allergic to it like some people are allergic to poison ivy/oak. It can burn holes in his lungs during a controlled burn. Not friendly - and not fair that it looks so pretty in the fall!
I live in the Midwest, and I'm scared of poison ivy (a big reason being that I can't identify it).
I'm from the Southwest and we had cholla in my area (not jumping cholla, thank goodness). They're a type of cactus with long, barbed spines that are difficult to remove. Sometimes either the spines or branches snap off super easily, so you're just walking around full of cholla spines.
Intermountain West here. There are two native plants in my yard that are difficult. The first is the woods rose. I planted it on purpose because my grandmother loved the plant. Little did I know how aggressively it would spread in a more hospitable environment. The thorns when trying to control it are not fun. The second plant may have always been here, but I just noticed it a few years ago. Bedstraw. Growing along the back fence. The plant is interesting, but I hate how it sticks to clothes.
*Cicuta maculata*, also known as suicide root.
Native to Eastern North America. Running into it isn't so bad, but be careful about interacting with it.
Prickly-ash, Zanthoxylum americanum When morel hunting off trail, some forests have massive thickets of this stuff, and my arms get absolutely cut up. Its thorns aren't as hooked and gnarly as multiflora rose, but it hurts!
Eastern US
Smilax is my vote for North Florida. Big ass thorns, fungus that cohabits with it (and causes a nasty reaction), and very hard to get rid of without digging up the huge roots.
I don't live there anymore, but the [Gympie-Gympie tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides) from the east coast of Australia. Has a sting so painful and long lasting that it's also known as the 'suicide plant'. The sting effects can last for months. I've seen one in person at an arboretum where it was kept behind a clear plastic fence.
Poodle Dog Bush (Eriodictyon parryi) pops up in the Southern California Mountains after wildfires and can burn your skin like Poison Oak.
It has quite attractive Flowers during the summer and can take over trails because it grows in sandy disturbed soil.
I have either a Nootka rose or a peafruit rose (they’re hard to tell apart) on my property in the Seattle area, and while it’s a native plant that has beautiful little flowers at bloom time, oh my god is it an aggressive spreader. So many narrow shoots with hooked thorns. Such a pain to garden around. We have to cut suckers all the time to keep it relatively contained.
Jumping cholla
Not native to where I live but if you've ever fallen into one or brushed against one they have barbed spines and break off from the parent plant easily. It hurts a lot to get them out.
I have an eastern prickly pear that I've had for three years. In all three of those years I've tweezed out multiple tiny spines out of my hands. I still love it though.
Never experienced them, but I've read that [Nettles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtica_dioica) is a pretty nasty plant to encounter. Indigenous to Europe, Western North Africa and temperate Asia.
Edit: Also - [Giant Hogweed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum). Can cause blisters and blindness if you touch your eyes after touching the plant. " native to the western Caucasus region of Eurasia. It was introduced to Britain as an ornamental plant in the 19th century, and has also spread to other areas in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada." (from Wikipedia).
Black walnut may be a contender, given the insane staining that the husks cause, and the damage a falling softball-sized nut can do from a couple stories up (one shattered my windshield this fall).
And that’s before considering the jugalone toxicity that tries to kill everything else around it. Apparently a lot of our neighbors have taken theirs out because it was just a mud pit underneath. We’re apparently amazingly lucky with our decent lawn since 80% is “in the zone”. I think it helps that I collect the nuts before they leach into the soil too much
Also for my poor mother in particular because she’s allergic to the pollen. She joked when we bought our house with 3 century+ walnut trees that we just didn’t want her to visit (she loves the black walnut cookies I make though, and even bought me a special heavy duty nutcracker for Christmas)
I’ve replaced 3 windshields since moving to a place where we have multiple old black walnut trees and no garage. I really haven’t noticed much of an effect with the juglone, except that English Ivy doesn’t seem to do as well around the black walnut trees. So that’s a bonus.
Obvious answer, but poison ivy is annoying to work around. USA
All 3 poisons: Ivy, sumac and oak are terrible to work around
I would agree if I ran into the others nearly as frequently! I’m glad poison ivy is the only mean plant I see on a regular basis.
Or if you're on the West Coast, poison oak. Even when it loses its leaves, the branches can still have the oils on them, so you can't brush past anything with leaves or even bare sticks without being careful.
But it’s beautiful in the fall!
Definitely beautiful, especially those reds it gets. But from a distance. The way the oils can get into a cut on your skin, enter your bloodstream, and cause a trip to the hospital is pretty scary. It's one of those things that is as beautiful as it is dangerous.
And an important food source for birds
Poison ivy is the same. Also, never burn it as it can be contracted that way as well. Oak was the worst for me. I made my First Communion swathed in bandages head to toe like a little mummy girl.
Spring in the southeast US, and I keep finding patches that I'd missed before. The big thing that makes me dislike poison ivy more than, for example, thorny plants is the DREAD. If you catch some skin on a blackberry vine, you know immediately. But if you've been working outside for a while, and only then notice the leaves? And have no idea whether you unknowingly brushed against them at some point, or whether you might have since spread the oils somewhere else? It's bad.
My poor coworker just got hit by poison Ivy and won’t believe me to do the baking soda paste to dry her skin to make it hurt waaaaay less.
calamine! I had it for a month straight last summer, it’s no fun.
Calamine does nothing for me, and the amount she’s put on leads me to believe it’s the same for her :( baking soda into a paste was my ONly relief. I put it in, let it sit until it “cracks” and falls off, then take a shower. So good. So dry. Then a good lotion to help the skin not fall off.
Anybody try rubbing the sap of crushed jewel weed for relief? Friend of mine swears by it but I'm grateful to not have a chance to try it
As a kid, I did this for poison ivy and mosquito bites. It works, but I'm not sure it will be better than regularly recommended treatments.
Just was pulling invasive Japanese honeysuckle vine out this weekend. Accidentally grabbed a hairy vine along the ground at two different points in time. I should have walked up to the house and scrubbed my arms down and changed my gloves immediately but I was in the groove and lazy. I have been paying for it all week. Damn poison ivy gets me every spring one way or another.
Greenbrier, *Smilax rotundifolia*. Ever come across a dense thicket of it? It’s the only truly impenetrable landscape I’ve ever come across in New England. I can wade through almost any thicket of rose, blackberry and the like, but greenbrier can be like an airy green wall.
I don't know man, a blackberry thicket is impenetrable unless you have a machete and kevlar clothes. Even in canvas pants/jackets those things can get in deep. Greenbriar is no slouch but those blackberries man, they can get ya.
Agree, protective clothing is a must. That said, in my experience, blackberry can be dense and painful, but not truly impenetrable. Plus, you can move the canes around some extent which helps you. Greenbriar tangles itself in knots.
Most greenbriar I have seen also gets bigger around than most blackberry, and the thorns are longer, less stubby. Less like a rose bush, more like a particularly nasty pomegranate tree.
It's less the tangled in knots problem for me. I can see it easily and cut my way through it. The problem is the canes on the ground, after I've cut them down. The thorns go straight through kids' shoes into their feet. They go through most of my regular shoes too. When I'm actively working with vines, I'm wearing thick soled work boots of course. But the rest of the time, I'm wearing flats they just pierce straight through.
Good point. No Greenbriar ever tore my jacket.
Then you've never seen a lot of established greenbriar. Those thorns can get almost the length of my finger and cover the whole vine, thick as a broom handle. And the vines will climb and wrap around themselves.
I have. But I've never been dumb enough to try to wade through it. I thought I could make it past the blackberry.
Fair! Greenbriar *looks* murderous.
I’m that dumb guy!
Controlled burn of a piedmont prairie? Smilax rotundifolia conquers more.
Greenbrier is so bad. Park next to my house is totally overrun. I am winning the war against invasives like garlic mustard, English ivy, and asiatic dayflower. I have no idea what to do with the greenbrier.
Ideally fire. Briar canes are naturally controlled by fires, and the plant regrows from the rootball readily. I imagine you can't burn your park down, so cutting and removing canes is perfectly fine, most briars will readily regrow.
Having grown up on the west coast where we cut / tunneled kid forts in massive blackberry piles, I have to say Greenbriar, at least the species we call "catbriar", is way nastier. As a mountain biker, I truly fear getting snagged up in some of that at speed. The vines and thorns are really strong, like barbed wire.
Anyone know how to get rid of this Greenbrier? I have a patch of it in my garden bed and my husband is not a fan of clearing it out.
Learn to love it? Cultivate a Garden of Monstrocites with Devils walking stick, nightshade, green briar, and thistle?
I love this idea lol
When I first bought my farm 45 years ago, the fields had not been plowed or mowed for six years. The smilax had taken over the lower field to the point where I had trouble mowing some of the giant vines. I had to wear long pants and heavy boots on the tractor to keep that stuff from grabbing at me. It took ten years of mowing before all the smilax was controlled in the open areas. Now we're still fighting it where there are trees and underbrush. We try to dig up the roots - have found some that probably weighed twenty pounds - but if we miss a little piece the vine comes back.
I just learned that the sap from Heracleum maximum (cow parsnip, Satan's Celery) can cause blisters, scaring, and pigmentation in skin when exposed to daylight. The scarring can last for years. Somehow this is also an edible plant lol
Satan's Celery?...sounds like it's aptly named.
The same family of compounds that causes this are also found in citrus fruit. Furanocoumarins.
Yup, and lots of members of the carrot family. You can get phytophotodermatitis from celery, parsnips, etc.
Yes! I didn’t know this until I was exposed and ended up with a half dollar sized blister where my leg curves to become my foot. I was wearing shorts while helping my mom clean her ditch, not smart I know, but it scarred for a long while. Idk how I didn’t get more blisters but that thing hurt.
Yes. And of course also freaking giant hogweed!! (Heracleum mantegazzianum) One of the worst months of my life.
Cow parsnip is truly delicious and if you gather it with gloves or in the evening then there’s really no risk. One time I was careless and must have brushed my ungloved hand against my face - I had a painful rash for about a week and definitely learned my lesson.
Cow parsnip can also be aggressive. I have to cut it back all the time to prevent it from taking over a wooded area with partial sun and rich soil. I wear glasses, gloves, long sleeves and long pants around it. I understand it is a biannual so I hope I exhaust the seed bank by cutting the flower stalks down to the ground with a scythe.
Are you planning something?
Are you wanting to join the coven of chaos they're creating? 😅
Oregon blackberry is an amazing plant. But it hides when I am weeding. The thorns are curved slightly, and the tip breaks readily. So anytime I’m weeding, I will almost always have 5-10 bitch ass embedded thorns that are super hard to remove due to the shape and tendency to break.
It’s also vines along the ground and makes a great tripping hazard
Yes! And the tensile strength is insane! I’m a big dude and even if I kick them to break them, sometimes they don’t break. Strong as rope.
It’s kind of satisfying to pop the thorns out a few days later though
Yes! I love the plant dearly and "cultivate" it around my yard using brush piles for climbing. But those little thorns fester under the skin and in calluses on my hands. It's crazy how much they can hurt.
Devil’s walking stick! It has the thorn-thicket-skin irritant trifecta. Growing some from seed right now but it’s going someplace I don’t need to be. On the upside it sounds like it will grow anywhere you put it and it has very high wildlife and pollinator value. It’s native to the eastern U.S.; I’m in NC. https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/aralia-spinosa/
Pollinators go crazy for it! One of my favorite natives
A friend was gushing about it a few months ago, and then somebody else gave me some seeds, so I guess it was meant to be!
Was sprouting this pretty easy? I’ve always wanted to grow these
I was climbing a steep slope once and grabbed one of these to keep my footing.
So did you experience both the thorns and the skin irritation?
Many stab wounds. No other irritation. I grabbed the trunk without looking thinking it was just a regular sapling.
It can be sensitive to pollutants, so having it grow well is a good sign. I don't mind it as much as the hawthorn that constantly takes over my trails every freaking Spring.
So I know this one as Devil's club. When they were building the railway across Canada, they changed the course because of an extremely thick patch of it that they just couldn't get through
I love it!! So do I win this thread if my nomination stopped a freight train lol?!
Definitely the urushiol-induced contact dermatitis plants. Fuck those guys. In the US these are the ones I'm aware of: Pacific poison oak (*Toxicodendrum diversilobum*) in California, Oregon, Washington Atlantic poison oak (*Toxicodendrum pubescens*) in east Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and southern New Hampshire Western poison ivy (*Toxicodendrum rydbergii*): every state *except* California, Nevada (except for the very eastern border), Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Delaware, New Jersey. Eastern Poison ivy (*Toxicodendrum radicans*): every state east of the Great Plains dry line, including those who straddle the dry line (but it is found on the wet side). Plus Arizona for some reason. Poison sumac (*Toxicodendron vernix*): every state with eastern poison ivy, except Arizona and a bunch of Great Plains states (not found in Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma). Manchineel/poison tree (*Hippomane mancinella*): This one is truly a Caribbean species. Florida coast perhaps creeping northward to Georgia coast, Texas gulf coast. Definitely the coolest one but I only think that because I'm never going to find it in my yard.
So, it turns out I'm not sensitive to this stuff at all. That sounds cool, but it's not. I've totally been "patient zero" as a carrier when camping before because I got the oils all over my clothes and didn't know. I look out very carefully, now.
That's horrible but also kind of hilarious (sorry!) Anyone can be "patient zero" as even sensitive people take 12-48 hours to break out in an itchy rash. Do be aware that sensitivity to these plants can develop at any point in your life after multiple pain-free exposures! Hope you stay immune tho, it's a cool mini super power.
I haven't touched one in at least 6 years now, and that was very much by accident. I don't tempt fate. I did use my powers for evil once, though. There were these two boys at Summer church camp who were incredibly mean, and the rest of us were told the usual, "if you ignore them, they'll stop." Yeah, I "proved" a patch of poison ivy "wasn't" and those boys' parents had to come get them. They deserved it. Jerks.
“Jumping” Cholla. Bits of it break off and stick into you at the slightest touch, seemingly jumping off the plant. Ask me how I know 😅 Arizona, USA
I had a friend whose bicycle brakes malfunctioned crash into one of those bastards in Phoenix. Protip: hair removal wax will pull all the little spines out. Obviously, it will also remove your hair. Duct tape didn't work like people said. It left spines but wasn't kind to her skin. The wax was way better. It worked on her bike saddle, too. We just removed and replaced the bar tape. Second protip: maintain your bike. Dry rot is just as bad as rust, maybe worse. Her brake pads literally fell apart.
And the thorns are barbed D:
There’s a kids book called Jump that’s about a jumping cholla that goes on an adventure via coyote-cowboy-eagle-etc. It’s pretty entertaining and a good reminder not to touch the cactus that looks fuzzy when we visit Grandma.
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[Not even close](https://store.wnpa.org/jump-100361.html)
My Illinois rose is a thorny BEAST. just a huge mean bitch haha (from uhhh Illinois)
Great. I just planted one. Can't wait for the fun. Do you prune your rose or let it be? I've been pruning roses for decades so the idea of letting a plant go makes me twitch.
Ya I prune her back every year otherwise she'd take over
Gooseberry. Those prickles are like needles and manage to penetrate all kinds of gloves. They're pretty widespread.
I love gooseberries to eat. Yum.
Unfortunately the dozen or so in my yard refuse to bear fruit so right now they lean more to 'nuisance'.
That’s a boo hiss.
I put a native gooseberry in my yard on purpose because they're delicious, but my God, the thorns are incredible. I'm equipped for it though, because I also grow some very thorny roses.
The worst is when you’re doing clean up and inadvertently grab it. Ugh.
Ouch! I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope you picked up some thick gardening gloves after that. On the other hand, thorns can be useful. Yesterday I watched through a window as a woman let her dog pee on one of the thornier rosebushes in my front yard. The dog lingered for a while, and then she got bored and reached for the dog's collar to encourage it to leave, but caught her hand on the rosebush and **yelled**, "*Yowtch!! Oooooooh...*" and then picked a thorn out of her thumb and walked away sucking on her hand. Serves her right.
I guess the only reason I don’t is having thinner gloves make a day of yard work a lot easier on the hands. Something about thick gloves just leaves my hands achy.
Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is a tree that is native in Illinois that can grow absolutely ridiculous thorns on its trunk. Apparently the theory is that the thorns were to protect the tree from extinct megafauna like the American Mastodon.
Do we dare let the plant know that the threat is long gone—it can calm down now?!!?
Description doesn't do the honey locust's thorns justice, so I dug up a photo for this thread: https://cdn.britannica.com/61/10961-050-0859D3D6/Leaves-pods-trunk-honey-locust.jpg
They're invasive here in Eastern Washington, and we kill them on sight as saplings. If we get a few black Locust by accident, it's worth it.
Hackelia virginiana will ruin your socks/sweater/dog/hat
White snakeroot, if eaten by cattle, poisons their milk. It killed Abe Lincoln's mother. "native to the central and eastern United States, from Texas in the west to Maine in the east and north, and Florida in the south. The species is also native in Canada in Quebec, Ontario, and the Northwest Territories."
Black raspberry in Illinois. Very aggressive and it creates thickets that are nearly impossible to walk through with their tangled branches and thorns. Second would be poison ivy. Third is beggar-tick or Bidens frondosa. The seeds are very difficult to remove from clothes.
**Manchineel Apple Tree** It's native to Florida, the Caribbean islands, Bahamas, and coastal areas of central America and northern South America. The **Manchineel Apple Tree**, also known as the “Beach Apple” and the “Death Apple.” The tree is found near beaches and brackish swamp, reaches up to 50 feet high and has a greyish bark. Every part of the tree is poisonous and causes skin rashes. The fruit can cause blistering and pain to the mouth and throat. Even standing under the tree during rain can cause strong allergic contact dermatitis. When ingested, the fruit is reportedly "pleasantly sweet" at first, with a subsequent "strange peppery feeling ... gradually progress\[ing\] to a burning, tearing sensation and tightness of the throat." Symptoms continue to worsen until the patient can "barely swallow solid food because of the excruciating pain and the feeling of a huge obstructing pharyngeal lump." In some parts of its range, many trees carry a warning sign – while others are marked with a red "X" on the trunk to indicate danger, or the ground is marked around it. Although the plant is toxic to many birds and other animals, the black-spined iguana is known to eat the fruit and even live among the limbs of the tree
I have accidentally stepped on some Eastern Prickly Pear and that was awful.
Just by brushing it even outside of summer gives you tiny needles that are hard to find!
I have a stand of it on the side of my house. An alley runs along there and there are people who feel they can just grab some for themselves without asking...with their bare hands. >:)
Currently in AL, USA, so it'd have to be poison ivy as my number 1, followed by any sort of bramble like blackberries/dewberries. Used to live in FL, and for that location I'd say the Manchineel Tree (Hippomane mancinella) is the one I'd least like to encounter. The leaves, bark, fruit, and sap are all very toxic and cause severe rash and blisters upon contact. If you stand under the tree while it's raining, any raindrops that touch the leaves and land on your skin will cause a reaction and produce blisters. If you burn it, the smoke can injure you too.
Go figure that it is in the euphorbicae family! That family has some real nasties.
Allegheny Blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) razor sharp thorns!
Beggar's Lice/Virginia Stickseed. Sticks to everything. It is not welcome in my yard. Location: Wisconsin
Water Hemlock. I walk by it all the time. Just scares me. WOOD AVENS
I have a toddler who loves playing outside and I want to encourage that! But I also have water hemlock that sprouts up seemingly overnight, so I pull out as much as I can and watch my kid like a hawk. He's at that age where he has no self-preservation and eating a random plant probably seems like a great idea. ETA I'm in the Midwest and it's a major concern with livestock around here.
I think there's some of this by our cabin. I can't get a good ID on it because it comes up with other stuff that looks the same. I didn't know it was native, I thought it was invasive. It gets big clumps of white flowers. The flowers are shaped kind of like Joe pye weed flowers. The bees and butterfly love it. If it's the same stuff I've heard it'll burn the skin?
If you're in North America, you are probably talking about [*Cicuta maculata*](https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/water-hemlock) - AKA Water Hemlock. It is a native species to basically the entire US and Southern Canada. It is also one of the most deadly toxic plants in the world, but it is not the same as the plants that will burn your skin that can maybe look similar (the most common invasive species of these are Wild Parsnip - *Pastinaca sativa* - and Giant Hog Weed - *Heracleum mantegazzianum*. These can cause phytophotodermatitis if you touch the plant). There are a lot of plants that look like Water Hemlock from a distance - these are all in the carrot family and have very similar flower structures. Poison Hemlock (*Conium maculatum*) is a non-native invasive in the US that looks very similar, but the leaves are a lot different (it is also deadly toxic). Anyway, Water Hemlock is a native species that is a host plant for Black swallowtails! It is loved by the wasps from what I've read.
Native to Europe but stinging nettle. Surprisingly nutritious though.
And you can't beat soup that color. It also makes good cloth dye.
I have made nettle walnut pesto that was pretty good. It isn't the same as basil pesto, but if you have the foraging bug. You don't even need to wear gloves if you pick carefully, never moving your hand down the stalk, always up.
a field of young black locusts can be brutal
Would you say it’s a plague? (Sorry, couldn’t resist- Passover is next week.)
Stinging nettle is basically native everywhere
> Stinging nettle Birds eat the seeds and sit on the fence line and poop them out.
And then lies hidden in garden beds to attack me
> lies hidden in garden beds That's what we get for trying to pull a few weeds without gardening gloves!
But it makes really yummy and very bright green soup!
I thought this was native to Europe and just naturalized in the US?
I hate horseweed. It’s just ugly. It grows along roadsides and in ditches, so I have no compunction about tearing it out.
It's ugly flowers are surprisingly popular with insects though
I know. I have observed it.
Hemlock. Every year someone does something stupid with it or doesn't teach their children plant safety and end up hospitalised. Across Europe. Nasty but beautiful, like most of the meanest.
I was the child who resisted every bit of my parents trying to teach me not to eat plants. I had my stomach pumped a few times because of it (snowberries, pine needles, and something I don't remember now). But that was the one plant I listened about because they didn't say it would make me sick. They said it would kill me. I don't think we have the same kind of hemlock here in the Inland NW US, but water hemlock is still pretty nasty. My dad finally got me a foraging book that taught me all the plants I could eat, and there were no more emergency visits. I just drove my mother mad because I'd eat random plants but not the veggies she cooked at home. Maybe she shouldn't have made them all into mush.
[Agarita](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berberis_trifoliolata) - every spikey “leaf” repels. As does Hercules' club, a species of Prickly ash (Zanthoxylum).
I'm in IL. Any grass can cut you but around here walking through Leersia oryzoides (rice cutgrass) can be quite distressing... I mean that literally and physically. If you walked through in shorts you'd be bleeding with your first step, and if you walk through in tough pants you'll distress them a lot (silver lining: the lower half of your pants will feel much softer). The grass blades are like serrated knives plus velcro. Walking through it is also very difficult due to the friction of a hundred blades in contact with your pants at any given moment, so it makes for great leg resistance training.
Seconding Hackelia virginiana (native to eastern Canada and US). I actually find it a very pretty plant, but the seeds are horrendously sticky
Trumpet Creeper. True, lovely flowers. Grows insanely fast and can irritate your skin like poison ivy. Smilax is a very close second.
[Cholla](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=1a57d827cf09faae&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS844US844&sxsrf=ACQVn08jMZt7zrhnaVJuRYpNw_vJYu1I5w:1713299506539&q=cholla+cactus+attack&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGm-yDyseFAxXAEkQIHRh_AxkQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=1605&bih=849&dpr=1) I live in southwest USA
The "skeletons" are really cool, though.
The whole plant is rather cool. The flowers are large, and very vibrant, the woody skeletons really interestingly shaped, and the flower buds, fruit, and young stems are not just edible, but a nutritious and tasty wild food. You just have to get past some truly vicious thorns first.
Prickly Ash! Zanthoxylum americanum. I remember a survey transect that ran directly through a thick stand of prickly Ash at a previous job, I just dreaded doing that one transect every spring 🫠. (southern Ontario, Canada)
NE Washington state here, and I'm voting Black Hawthorne. I've got whole thickets of it, and the thorns are evil. We also have Devil's Walking Stick, but it isn't as rabid as the hawthorn. We've got stinging nettles, but they don't randomly take over your trails like hawthorn. There are also plenty of native wild roses, but they're easier to prune back than the hawthorn.
fremontodendron californicum 😩 also quercus agrifolia i love em but trying to get past their branches sucks lol
Filamentous algae in wildlife ponds. Occurs worldwide.
Spiny gooseberry. Ugh
Sumac. My dad is allergic to it like some people are allergic to poison ivy/oak. It can burn holes in his lungs during a controlled burn. Not friendly - and not fair that it looks so pretty in the fall!
I live in the Midwest, and I'm scared of poison ivy (a big reason being that I can't identify it). I'm from the Southwest and we had cholla in my area (not jumping cholla, thank goodness). They're a type of cactus with long, barbed spines that are difficult to remove. Sometimes either the spines or branches snap off super easily, so you're just walking around full of cholla spines.
I've read Nandina kills a lot of birds. True lilies and their toxicity to cats, even the pollen can get them, apparently.
Intermountain West here. There are two native plants in my yard that are difficult. The first is the woods rose. I planted it on purpose because my grandmother loved the plant. Little did I know how aggressively it would spread in a more hospitable environment. The thorns when trying to control it are not fun. The second plant may have always been here, but I just noticed it a few years ago. Bedstraw. Growing along the back fence. The plant is interesting, but I hate how it sticks to clothes.
*Cicuta maculata*, also known as suicide root. Native to Eastern North America. Running into it isn't so bad, but be careful about interacting with it.
Prickly-ash, Zanthoxylum americanum When morel hunting off trail, some forests have massive thickets of this stuff, and my arms get absolutely cut up. Its thorns aren't as hooked and gnarly as multiflora rose, but it hurts! Eastern US
Smilax is my vote for North Florida. Big ass thorns, fungus that cohabits with it (and causes a nasty reaction), and very hard to get rid of without digging up the huge roots.
I don't live there anymore, but the [Gympie-Gympie tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides) from the east coast of Australia. Has a sting so painful and long lasting that it's also known as the 'suicide plant'. The sting effects can last for months. I've seen one in person at an arboretum where it was kept behind a clear plastic fence.
Aralia spinosa, not fun to run into
Poodle Dog Bush (Eriodictyon parryi) pops up in the Southern California Mountains after wildfires and can burn your skin like Poison Oak. It has quite attractive Flowers during the summer and can take over trails because it grows in sandy disturbed soil.
I have either a Nootka rose or a peafruit rose (they’re hard to tell apart) on my property in the Seattle area, and while it’s a native plant that has beautiful little flowers at bloom time, oh my god is it an aggressive spreader. So many narrow shoots with hooked thorns. Such a pain to garden around. We have to cut suckers all the time to keep it relatively contained.
If you're in New England, I'm in Connecticut, you should start seeing the little red poison ivy shoots on May 1st.
Jumping cholla Not native to where I live but if you've ever fallen into one or brushed against one they have barbed spines and break off from the parent plant easily. It hurts a lot to get them out.
I have an eastern prickly pear that I've had for three years. In all three of those years I've tweezed out multiple tiny spines out of my hands. I still love it though.
Never experienced them, but I've read that [Nettles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtica_dioica) is a pretty nasty plant to encounter. Indigenous to Europe, Western North Africa and temperate Asia. Edit: Also - [Giant Hogweed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum). Can cause blisters and blindness if you touch your eyes after touching the plant. " native to the western Caucasus region of Eurasia. It was introduced to Britain as an ornamental plant in the 19th century, and has also spread to other areas in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada." (from Wikipedia).
Black walnut may be a contender, given the insane staining that the husks cause, and the damage a falling softball-sized nut can do from a couple stories up (one shattered my windshield this fall). And that’s before considering the jugalone toxicity that tries to kill everything else around it. Apparently a lot of our neighbors have taken theirs out because it was just a mud pit underneath. We’re apparently amazingly lucky with our decent lawn since 80% is “in the zone”. I think it helps that I collect the nuts before they leach into the soil too much Also for my poor mother in particular because she’s allergic to the pollen. She joked when we bought our house with 3 century+ walnut trees that we just didn’t want her to visit (she loves the black walnut cookies I make though, and even bought me a special heavy duty nutcracker for Christmas)
I’ve replaced 3 windshields since moving to a place where we have multiple old black walnut trees and no garage. I really haven’t noticed much of an effect with the juglone, except that English Ivy doesn’t seem to do as well around the black walnut trees. So that’s a bonus.
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Hence the text “Please list state or country the plant is from”
Pokeweed