Before we get started on this very fun episode, we have a couple of things that we want to announce. So we recorded this back in November of twenty twenty and since that time, since we recorded it, there have been two very exciting developments as it pertains to Matt Candeas. Number one is that Matt candeis is now doctor Matt candeis PhD.
Heck, you're not right.
He successfully defended his PhD.
Woohoo, congratulations, thrilling. And number two is that not only did he defend his PhD, but doctor Candeus wrote a dang.
Book, a whole book while he was hosting an amazing podcast while he was working on his dissertation.
I mean, like that's in will Stuck in Quarantine? Like what Yeah, it's called in Defensive Plants, an Exploration into the Wonder of Plants, And it's a val for pre order now. It's scheduled to be released on February sixteenth of twenty twenty one, so make sure you put in your pre order now.
I can't wait.
I've already ordered two copies.
Absolutely, and we will link to it on our website as well.
Okay, now we'll get into the episode. Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh, and I'm Aaron Olman Updike.
And I'm Matt can Dais.
Yeah, and this is a very special crossover edition of this podcast Will.
Kill You And in defensive plants.
What episode are we even covering today? What's the topic?
Very stoked to be talking about poison ivy and like poison oak and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it'll be poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, lacquer tree, I'm sure lots of other stuff. I am super pumped. There's a lot more there than I thought in terms of the history. I have already so many questions for both of you two, so yep, sorry in advance, but yeah, so hopefully to make the question and answer aspect a little bit more palatable, let's talk about the quarantine for this week's let us. So, what are we drinking?
M Itch cream crem Itch crem.
Sorry, it's so appropriate because what is in the krem to it?
Of course, many different crems. We have crem to cacao, yep, and just regular crem, which is heavy cream and uh an almond liqueur and then some grenadine just to make sure that it looks like what Aaron, what's the look that we're going for here?
I believe, Aaron, that we are going for the look of calamine lotion.
We are.
It's not the smell of calamine, which is maybe a good thing, but I kind of like the smell of calumin motion.
It's oddly nostalgic.
Oddly yeah, well, yeah, I mean it's a little too recent for me. Yeah, yeah, it is also nostalgic.
I swear this Quarantini tastes better than it sounds.
Yeah, really, it really does. It's a very like nineteen fifties quarantine for sure.
Yeah, I'll get on board with that.
And also, I wonder for those who are dairy free out there. I would guess that coconut cream or coconut milk would work as well as heavy cream.
I bet coconut cream would work really well.
I bet it'd be pretty tasty too.
Yeah. Well, well, then, do we have business to take care of before we dive in? I feel like we should, but I don't know if we do.
I can't think of any right now. Maybe we'll have to record something and splice it.
In behind the scenes.
Wouldn't be the first time.
No, let's just dive right in. I'm really I can't wait to hear about the history of this. I also always forget that we do these episodes in a different order.
I know, I know time this is our first rodeo, it is the very.
First time in our sixty third episode or something.
Yeah, who knows. Okay, well, let's take a quick break first, and then we'll dive into the history.
Cool awesome.
I feel like everyone, well maybe not everyone, but at least a lot of people who have spent any time in US forests have a poison ivy or a poison oak or a poison sumac story. Whether it happened to them or whether it happened to a friend or a cousin. These plants seem to have really left their mark in like a well I learned my lesson kind of a way, because is there any story that's not like and that's the last time I'll use an unidentifiable vine as toilet paper.
I know a sad amount of those stories. Leaves of three, man, just let it be.
I mean, okay, I have I'm gonna put a pin in that because I have questions about the whole Leaves
of three thing. But yeah, we'll get back to palid So my older sister and my mom would get poison ivy rashes like every summer, it seemed, and there would always be cursing about gardening, and the bathtub would be crusty with colloidal oatmeal scum, and then there would be smears of pink calamine lotion, like on the most unexpected surfaces like doorknobs and like you know, carpet whatever, just kid well, I would just sit there and be unbearably
smug because even though I spent most of my childhood playing outside capture the flag or running to get the soccer ball after it dribbled off into the woods, I was always poison ivy free. I was like, no, I'm not affected by poison ivy, you know, like it was unbearable, I'm sure.
So.
Yeah, that was me until this summer. And you guys know the story, or at least like bits of it in the picture. Yeah, the pictures are horrific, and I will post them. Yeah, I'll do like progress picks, because I did. I took them every day. Okay, But for our listeners, the long and short of it is that maybe don't brag about being immune to the to the effects of poison ivy at all, and also maybe know what the plants look like and avoid.
Them, start with the ones that can affect you.
Yeah, it's a great that's a great idea. This summer, I went to my mom's house in Kentucky for a bit. I helped out with gardening and cleaning up, namely around a fire pit, pulling tons and tons of viny plants off the rocks and bushes and then also burning it, which could have been a lot worse, I want. Yeah, And then a day or two later, everything on my body was itchy, like my A couple days after that, my arms, my legs, my torso was absolutely covered in
the most painful, itchy rash I've ever experienced. I didn't get any sleep, and I went through like an entire bottle of calamine lotion legit, and I eventually was in such unbearable discomfort that I had to go to urgent care and they gave me steroids because wow, I couldn't just function. Yep, I still have the marks on my arms, like this is six months later and it's still there.
Uh yeah. So Anyway, after I came out of the fog of this experience, I became super curious about this horrific plant, like it's history, why on Earth my body reacted so badly after years of complacency, and most importantly, to see if it served any ecological purpose so that I couldn't ethically go through my plan of ridding the earth of such a terrible substance.
Please don't. We'll get into that, but please don't.
Okay, all right, Fine, I knew it. I stink and knew it, all right. So that's when I texted you guys and was like, can we do an episode on poison ivy?
Yes?
Please, because I don't want to have to do all the reading myself anyway. Okay, but this episode isn't specifically about poison. It's about the thing in it that causes this rash, erushiol, which I hope is the right way to say it. There are different pronunciations out there on the internet. It is spelled in case you are curious, you are U shiol erin. I'm sure that you'll talk a lot more about its structure and its effects. But basically, erushiol is an oily mix of organic compounds, and it
can be found in a bunch of different species of plants. Matt, I'll leave it to you to get to those specific numbers. But the human history of urushiol goes back thousands and thousands of years. The erushil containing sap of the lacquer tree has been used as like this hard varnish or lacquer in Chinese, in Korean and Japanese lacquerware for around six thousand years, so like a really long time. And it's also like been used to coat wood. It's very
very hard and durable, super cool. And the word erusiol actually derives from the Japanese word for the lacquer tree, which is erushi. Huh yeah. And the very first descriptions of the rash caused by exposure to erushiol they talk about how it appears in lacquer artists on their hands and arms, especially those just learning the art. And here in North America, poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.
These plants were all used by some Native American groups for various purposes such as dyeing or writing on textiles. So apparently like the sap will be like a dark color that increases in darkness over time, and it kind of continues to bleed it's really interesting, Like there are pictures of this that you can see, and they were also used as materials for baskets, as medicinal treatments, including
possibly hyposensitization, cooking, and also in some religious rites. So there are a bunch of different purposes for which these different erusial containing plants were used in North America. Prior to in North America by Native Americans, but the first written descriptions of the irritating effects of the actual poison ivy plant came from none other than John Smith. Like huh,
like Pocahon, Pocahontas, Jamestown, John Smith. Wow, So he definitely wasn't the first European to observe the effects that the plant had, but he based his observations on someone else's unpublished manuscript, which is cool, don't take a threadlish. He didn't, at least from what I could read. He wasn't like, so I discovered this plant, like he wrote about it
as if it had already been known. So yeah, anyway, but he wrote that quote, the poisoned weed is much in shape like our English ivy, but being touched causeth redness, itching, and lastly blisters and which Housoever, after a while pass away of themselves without further harm. Yet because for the time they are somewhat painful, it hath got itself an ill name, although questionless of no ill nature. Huh yeah, okay, So he's like, these don't mean to do anything. It's
not that bad like poison. That seems like at you, but I mean grow up. And so this description, which was written in the sixteen hundreds, of course, kind of sets the tone that a lot of early naturalists took towards the plant. They felt that it didn't deserve the name poison, but only a few of them dared to suggest that the plants held potential for commercial or medicinal use, despite having observed some Native American groups using the plants
in these various ways. So throughout much of the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, the rusiol reducing plants of North America didn't receive much attention from the botanists or naturalists, mostly just being written about as a curiosity. I do want to read like a couple of excerpts from this description of poison IVY from the early seventeen hundreds, naturalist Paul Dudley of Massachusetts.
Oh, yes, Dudley. Okay, I have no idea who he is.
Let's see. Okay, so here's here's a little bit of this description. So the inside of the wood is yellow and very full of juice, as glutinous as honey or turpentine. The wood itself has a strong unsavory smell, but the juice stinks as bad as carrion. Okay, the juice, the juice, Okay, a little bit more. First, it must be observed that it poisons two ways, either by touching or handling it, or by the smell. For the scent of it when cut down in the woods or on the fire, has
poisoned persons to a very great degree. And then he talks about how it only affects some people, for I have seen my own brother not only handle it, but chew it without any harm at all, which is horrifying to think of, absolutely horrifying. And then the third thing that he mentions is that this sort of poison is never mortal, and will go off in a few days
of itself, like the sting of a bee. But generally the person applies plantain water or salad oil, which is olive oil and cream okay, And then he talks about how his neighbor, who was so badly affected by it, said that from this point on he will always remember the touch of poison ivy because it is as cold as a piece of ice, and he could distinguish it, whether blindfold or in the dark, from any other wood
in the world. And so in that description there were a few mentions of remedies like salad, oil and cream. But I also saw recommended to rub a mixture of charcoal and hog's lard on the affected areas. Could work, two knows. I don't know if it would smell grate. And of course, you know, to throw back to our quarantiny calamine. So I was like, well, what is calamine lotion? What's the history of calamine lotion?
Two histories for the price of one here, Eric, I.
Mean, this is this is literally like a sentence.
But yes, let's go with that.
I did a tiny bit of digging because it's kind it was kind of hard to find a lot of like substantial information. But it goes way back. So calamine lotion, it's that pink liquidy lotion used to treat all kinds of itchy things. It's supposed to dry out the skin and relieve the itch. That way, It's made of zinc oxide and ferric oxide. And I found a mention in one book that calamine lotion has been used as far back as fifteen hundred BCE in ancient Egypt.
Whoa, yeah, so wait is it? How is it different than like sunscreen?
Like, yeah, isn't like zinc and all that and sunscreen too?
Yeah?
I don't know. I mean, so zinc oxide and ferric oxide, and then there are some other things in there, like phenol and stuff. I can't remember what else is in there is like, but the zinc oxide and ferric oxide are the two active ingredients.
That's wild interesting. Wow.
Yeah, So anyway, Aaron, maybe you can tell us whether it does anything.
Do you want me to just spoilers? I mean, yeah, it helps the edge?
Okay, good, I mean I n of one, that's me. Yes, I can attest to that that it did help tremendously. I was coated. Okay.
Anyway, Okay, little pink airon run into the woods.
During this time. Unless you were living in areas where these plants flourished, you probably didn't know of its existence. Unless you were like a super enthusiastic botanist like Matt indeed, and in which case you could even get some seeds and have them grow in your own garden, and that's exactly what people did. Poison ivy and poison sumac were grown in the English Royal gardens at Q, the gardens of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and also in the gardens of the Empress Josephine Bonaparte.
That's red. Huh yeah good that good for them, Yeah.
Good for them.
It never reached super popularity status for reasons you can probably guess, but it did earn a super fan in the late seventeen hundreds by the name of Andre de Fresnoy. He was an army physician and a professor of medicine, and so during this time in Western medicine, a lot of medicinal treatments were derived directly from plants, and basically, if a plant produced some sort of strong effect on the human body after contact or ingestion, it was thought okay,
in smaller doses this could be helpful. And this fine line between medicine and poison is something that we've definitely touched on in all of our poison crossover episodes. So like Rice and Belladonna Wolf Spain, this two facedness of these compounds, and so it totally makes sense that poison ivy and other related plants were looked at for their potential in medicine. This guy, Defresnoy, didn't start off as
the world's biggest poison ivy fan. He was giving a lecture about various medicinal plants, which included poison ivy, and he was talking about the painful and itchy sores that it could cause, and there was some young dude in the audience who was like, all right, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. And so after the lecture he went up and was like, can I have some of those leaves? I'm gonna see if this actually causes
the horrible blisters you said it will. And it did horrible, horrible, painful, itchy blisters all over his hand and wrist, and he probably regretted his choice a little bit. But when the swelling finally went down, he noticed that an old sore that had been on his wrist for ages had finally disappeared, and so he went back to Defresnoy and was like, oh my gosh, this old sword disappeared. I'm pretty sure that the poison ivy treated it, and so Defresnoy was like,
I've discovered the next big thing in medicine. So he started like cultivating this thing like crazy. He began prescribing poison IVT, which he personally tested out and noted, Oh, it only causes mild stomach irritation and increased sweat and increased urine production.
Oh great, I don't need to sweat anymore.
Really, I don't think that would be a good idea. I'm horrified to think of drinking poison iv T, but don't.
Also, I do want to rub poison ivy on anyone at a A Q and A that says really a comment more than a question. But I digress.
Oh my god, I love that beautiful. So he Defresnoy was still somehow encouraged by what he was seeing, so he claimed it could cure anything from skin maladies to paralysis. Whether he actually did any controlled trials is not.
Known, and he was just making stuff.
I'm didn't yep.
But that didn't stop him from lovingly cultivating more and more and more of the plants and sending them to his botanist friends and his love for poison Ivy nearly got him killed, actually not by the plant, but for political reasons. So he had sent some plants to one of his friends because his friends wanted to or his friend wanted to like cultivate it, and then he wrote a follow up letter to ask how the plants were doing, saying, how are our dear ruths like RHUs because that was
the genus back in the day. How I longed to see them, oh dear, And unfortunately for de FRESNOI, the letter got intercepted and the authorities accused him of working with the Russians, which like wo yep, But eventually he was like, no, no, I'm just a plant nerd. I really didn't mean it.
Think I've almost been politically assassinated.
I mean, I really feel like it might. It's a dangerous profession. So he explained himself out of it, and sadly his poison Ivy garden didn't outlive him by very much. After he died, his pharmacist brother dug up all of the plants into de stored them. These are terrible.
Things, ye Look, I know about drugs and this is not We're not doing yes.
I think it was described as his skeptical pharmacist brother cool skeptic, and Russiel producing plants never did really seem to find another champion for their use in medicine, but beginning in the early twentieth century, there was increasing attention paid to this group of poisonous plants as a whole. Botanists reclassified the plants from the genus roost to the genus Toxicodendron, while chemists began trying to pin down exactly what it was about these plants that caused such irritation.
In the early days of germ theory, some researchers floated the idea that it was actually pathogenic microbes in the plant that caused the horrible reaction in humans. It was actually an affection, and the one that was shown not to be true. I kind of love the enthusiasm for microbes, so it was just like me to my crobes solve everything, Like every question we've ever had, it's microbes, Like.
I really I think that's adorable and I really like it.
But yeah, it wasn't true. And then people were like, Okay, maybe it's a volatile oil exuded by the plant into the air, or maybe it's a carbohydrate. But finally the mystery was solved in the nineteen twenties when the Japanese scientist Rico Majima described the exact chemical structure of the toxin, which is really a mix of organic compounds like I
mentioned earlier, and he named it arushiol. And from what I can tell, poison ivy and other urushiol producing plants have never really stood front and center in academic research, although there does seem to be lots of comparative studies with other organic irritating compounds, as well as some research into detecting tiny amounts of rousio using UV light. But poison ivy did earn its place in popular culture with the song Poison Ivy by the Coasters, recorded in nineteen
fifty nine. Do you guys know the song?
Classic?
Now?
I have no idea. I've never heard that.
Are you serious? We used to sing this, I think because my mom was so badly affected by poison ivy all the time. This was like a family favorite.
I feel very weird thing. Maybe I would know it.
Okay, I'm not going to sing it because I won't subject people to that. However, I will read a few of the lyrics. Okay, this is from the middle of the song, but you should go and listen.
I need to know how it goes, if I know, to know if I know it, because you know I'm right.
Yeah, that's true. And maybe I have heard this. Come on, I've heard you do carry out.
Come on, I'm so apologetic for that now and forever. Met Okay, you'll have to just you'll have to look it up. It's worth it, I promise, Okay, Okay. Measles make you bumpy, and mumps will make you lumpy, and chicken pox will make you jump in twitch.
You know, I do not know. Just like a very Kentucky thing.
This is not a Kentucky thing. I listened to this when I was in Florida. Okay, when I was a child in Florida. How dare you? Okay? Returning to it. A common cold of foolia and whooping cough can cool you, but poison ivy lord will make you itch. You're gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion. You'll be scratching like a hound the minute you start to mess around. And then it goes. Poison ivy, poison ivy. Late at night,
when you're sleeping, poison Ivy comes a creeping around. You don't know that wows a creeping she did it.
It's because two of us in this room have not grown up south of the Mason Dixon life. Gosh, okay, well, we don't have the kind of folk music in New England or California. That's not a slight. That is not a slight against you, But we didn't have.
Missed out a big time free surfrock is what I would describe it as. It's like Buddy Holly esque, uh.
Measles makes you bumpy, chicken pox makes you lumpy. That doesn't sound I swear.
Okay's let's honestly right now, the three of us needs to take a pause and we need to all go to YouTube and type in poison ivy. Okay, we're doing it, We're doing it. Wow. I was just jamming on that for way too long. I miss you, guys.
I think you need to get the rights to be able to use that in this episode.
Yeah, I would love to do that. I mean, is it not a great song?
No, that's great, And and I take back everything I said about it being a southern ditty. That is totally exactly, Buddy Holly Era updue thank you.
I loved the song. And however, however, according to the songwriters, it's not about rush y'all, it's not about Poison Ivy.
It's about a girl named poison Ivy.
Well kind of, it's about an STI.
Oh oh no.
Late at night, when you're sleeping, Poison Ivy comes a cream and around, I mean.
And it says you can look, but do not touch.
Yeah, you scratch it the minute you start to miss.
So what's it about crabs? It's about crabs?
Well, so the songwriter said the clappergn Rhea, I thought that was burned.
What okay, they should listen to our episode that that doesn't that's not consistent with this.
I mean, it was the nineteen fifties. Do you really think messaging on Sti's was on point? This is how they had to get the info out, okay. And of course, you know, in addition to that amazing song, there's also the Batman character Poison Ivy, and a movie titled Poison Ivy about a murdering teen basically like it became sort of this second code for an evil woman or like a sneaky evil, you know, villainous woman. But speaking of murder, I have one last story to tell you before passing
the mic. Ooh, okay, so I definitely remember talking about an assassination attempt with Risin in that episode and a murder in I think the Belladonna episode about the guy who murdered his wife in the garden. He like served her gen and tonic or something. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. So I wanted to continue that really depressing trend. Awesome, Okay, I found a news story forgive me, But I googled poison ivy murder and I found.
In a news story I don't forgive you.
I found a news story about a Baltimore County woman named Roxanne Ameck who was found murdered in two thousand and six, and her body was discovered in a wooded area that was absolutely teeming with poison ivy plants. Detectives immediately suspected her husband, Michael Ammick, because it's always the husband, always the husband, but also because his arms were completely covered in poison ivy and there was other circumstantial evidence, but that was like one of their key points of
evidence in the trial. But also they weren't able to charge him for ten years because they wanted to wait until they got better physical evidence, and so that's for some reason, that's it took them two thousand and six. What and so they finally got better DNA evidence and he was finally convicted of second degree murder in twenty eighteen.
Wow.
Yeah, so yeah, that's the very odd and jumbled history of poison IVY.
All right, all right, not at all what I was expecting.
It doesn't quite have the same, like you know, Janice two faced character nature as some of the other poisons that we've covered, but it has inspired great pop songs and annual Poison Oak show in California that I forgot to mention since since nineteen eighty two they have like wreaths.
And stuff show A show.
I knew that a show.
Yeah.
I want to meet the people that go to that show.
Is it not like you are?
You know? I would not hear that personally, not my jam, but I'll talk to him.
I would like to go and just like wear a full body biohazard suit. Yeah, I'm so scared of poison. I may know. Okay, Erin, please tell us what on earth this plant does to us?
I am thrilled to do so, but I'll take a quick break first. Okay, poison ivy, poison, oak, poison, sumac, et cetera. I'm really excited, and I won't tell you why yet, but we'll get to the point why I'm really excited to talk about this today. But first I have to give a huge shout out to this one paper that I found. It was by Gladman in two
thousand and six. It was like a single author paper, which never happens anymore, but it honestly was so comprehensive and straightforward and laid out all of the bay six of what somebody would want to know about the biology of poison ivy. And I haven't found a paper like that in a very long time, so I really want to give them a big shot out. Yeah, thank you so much. It made this research journey a lot simpler.
So I will obviously link to that. Okay, So, the compound, like you already mentioned aaron that is found in all of these plants that causes us such distress is rushi. All let's go with that. So roushi al is like you mentioned aaron, it's so amalgamation of organic compounds. It's a phenolic lipid compound. Okay. That basically just means it's made up of fatty acids and a phenol ring, which
is like one of those six carbon rings. Okay. And then the different specific forms of eruchiol that are found in different species of plant differ in their carbon side chains, which are called like catacols.
I think vaguely remember that.
Yeah, please don't ask me any more organic chemistry questions than that, because even that was a challenge for me. Okay, So what it means for us, let's let's focus now back on like the biology side of this. The chemical that poison ivy produces this erusiol. It's a resin. You kind of already mentioned this, Aaron, So it's an oily substance. And what's important, and Matt, I know you'll talk more about this. This is a compound that's contained within the
plant tissues itself. It's not something that's excreted by the plant. So you have to have damage to the plant to actually release this compound, Is that right, Matt?
Yeah, correct, totally.
Okay. So if you just like touch an intact leaf just by like gently brushing it, you're not likely to come in contact with erushiol.
Right, yeah, that's my favorite thing to do in my floristics classes, to touch the leaf and go what is this? And they're like, law, yeah, I don't know.
But if you're like pulling weeds erin or bushwhacking or cleaning brush out of your mom's yard eron, you're going to be exposed.
Okay, yeah, I am exposed right now. Actually, yea, all of this exposed very pointed language.
Some other things that are important about this oil. It's non volatile, so it doesn't just like dissipate into the air like say ethanol or something like that. But it does dry very quickly onto surfaces, and once it's dried, it maintains its antigenic properties, which means that like if a deer came by and munched on a bunch of poison ivy, did deer eat poison ivy? Oh yeah, okay,
I thought so, but I just made things up. So if a deer came by and much to a bunch of poison eyed, so a bunch of erusia was released and dried, and then you brushed past that vine, well now you can be exposed, okay. And what's important is that as little as two milligrams of erusia can cause a reaction. I have no idea how much a plant produces.
A lot more than that, Okay, I guess you're a lot.
And like you mentioned Aaron, it can be aerosolized in the smoke and then it can actually affect like your respiratory tract. So that's like pretty serious. It's estimated that anywhere from like fifty to seventy five percent of the US adult population is sensitive. And this goes really it's across all ages. It's just by the time you get
to adulthood it's about fifty to seventy five percent. And there's some thought that like maybe there's a genetic link, because if you have two parents that are both sensitive, you have like an eighty percent chance of being sensitive. But it also depends a lot on exposure. So let's talk about the exposure, shall we.
Yeah, and then I have a question, Oh, do you want to ask it now? Yeah, Actually, it'll probably be better if I do that now for everyone listening. So Dad, my dad not sensitive to it, Okay, my mom extremely
sensitive to it. When she was like i'll just say, many months pregnant for me, she was doing what Erin was doing, weeding in the garden, sweating, going like this, wiping it all over, and there is the most tragic picture of her, like I'm guessing like eight months pregnant for me, in a chair covered in calamine and just blistery, crustiness, just looking very sad. And I'm wondering, I am not
sensitive to it. Is it the genetic component for my dad not being sensitive or did I get some weird antibody resistance from being in the womb when my mom was fascinating?
Yeah, fascinating question, Matt.
Thank you.
What an interesting question. In basically, I'm going to I'm going to I'm not going to guess. This isn't a full guess. This is an educated guess.
I'll take it. I'll take it.
Based on what I know about the path of physiology, which we're about to get into. It's you just you got lucky. This is not from your mom's exposure.
Okay, I I have a question for Matt. It's actually more of a comment.
I'm gonna rup poison ivy on you.
No, My question was do you think your mom would be willing to share that photo?
Ooh uh? For me? Her boy probably but if she knew how many people might see it, I won't tell her that, and I'll just get her to share it with me. How's that tell her? Matt, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that to my mom. No, I'll ask, I'll turn, I'll try. I love her to death and I don't want to take advantage of her. But she'll probably share it.
It sounds like an amazing picture.
It does.
It's it's so tragic.
Yeah, yeah, everyone, everyone send us your worst poison ivy pictures. Oh gosh, yes, please do Yeah, we'll start a thread on like Twitter or.
Insteads do it on Reddit so it can get weird.
Oh good, good idea. Okay, so listen, let's talk about how this happens. Because this is the part, you guys, that I'm really excited about it.
Saying this is the moment.
This is the moment, okay. And the reason I'm so excited is because we get to talk about hypersensitivity reactions, which I think are so fun and interesting. Okay, all right, So clinically, the rash that you get from poison ivy, everyone knows it causes a rash. Okay, right, if you don't we'll talk about it in a minute, So don't worry. The rash that you get from poison ivy, it's called an allergic contact dermatitis. Okay, So from that we already
know a lot. It's inflammation in your skin derm itis. You get it from contact with the plant. We already talked about that. But it's caused by an allergic reaction to the plant. What the heck is an allergic reaction? Who fun?
Okay.
There are four different types of hypersensitivity reactions, okay, types one through four. Recently they were updated so that actually types two and four both have multiple subtypes, but we're just gonna go with one.
Two, three, and four.
Okay, I won't tell.
Thank you.
And all hypersensitivity reactions have to do at least in part with antibodies being formed to something that stimulates an immune response, which is that's like what antibodies are supposed to do. We talked a lot about that in our vaccines episode. But in the case of hypersensitivity reactions, the amount of immune rescis sponse that ends up being generated is ott over the top. No, that's love island, okay, And that causes a problem in and of itself. Okay.
So I'm going to very very briefly go through the four types and then we're gonna focus on the one that causes allergic contact dermatitis aka poison ivy Okay, cool. So Type one is an ig E, which is a specific type of antibody you have like I G G I G M. So ig E mediated reaction is type one, and this is what you probably think of when you think an allergic reaction. Okay. So like anaphylactic shock, that's
type one. Okay, So like shellfish allergy, peanut allergy, that kind of thing, even like hives that you get, Okay. These are basically what happens is this type of antibody binds to these cells called mass cells, and they release a whole bunch of histamine and then boom, you get a massive inflammatory reaction. Okay. That's type one classic allergies.
Type two is called a cytotoxic or IgG or IgM, so it's a different type of antibody response, and it causes things like autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which is a type of anemia where your red blood cells go boom. Also good pasture syndrome, which is a kidney disease. Okay, and so this is like, you know, antibodies that are directed against our cell membranes. Uh. And then type three is what's called an immune complex mediated response. So it's the same type of antibodies as in type two IgG or IgM.
But basically what happens is these these antibodies kind of glom onto each other and then deposit places that they shouldn't and then make you sick. So that's like a more complicated one.
Okay.
So something like serum sickness if you've ever heard of that, that's a type three response.
Okay.
And then we get to type four.
Okay, we're there, We're finally here.
So the allergic contact dermatitis caused by erusiol is a type four hypersensitivity reaction. This is called a delayed or a T cell mediated response. And if you want to know like the specifics, it's a type four A response. Okay. So how does this one work? Okay, it's a little bit different than all the others.
Exciting.
So the first time that you're exposed to poison, ivy oils, the catacols, which are part of that erusiol compound, they bind to and penetrate through your skin cells. Okay, and then with like underneath the surface of your skin, they bind to the surface of these cells that are called antigen presenting cells in your skin. These are often called Langerhans cells, and their job is to internalize antigens, process them, and then travel back to our lymph nodes and present
those antigens to T cells. Okay, basically, and that's like a normal thing that they would do. Okay, that's their job. They're an antigen presenting cell. So they travel back to your lymph node and they go, hey, T cells, I found this stuff, and I think it might be bad. I don't know what to do. I'm leaving this for you, and the T cells are like great, thank you so much. Lang your Hans appreciate it. Thanks for bringing it. We're just gonna make a bunch of copies of it. We'll
be on the ready. We'll have like a big army of cells back here just whenever we need it. Okay, we got you. And that's exactly what happens. So urushio causes a large amount of these T cells to be made kind of at the ready, and they just hang out in our body until the next time that you're exposed.
So on subsequent contact with the routiol, those T cells happen to come in and they're like, oh, hey, I recognize this, calling me ORMI, right, and then they immediately get to work destroying skin cells, so killing cells wherever they find this antigen. Wow, and then also like upregulating your immune response, releasing all these other immune modulators that produce things like vasodilation to help increase blood flow, so
you get further inflammation. And then you also have a response in your skin cells themselves, which are called your keratinocytes, that further this inflammatory response. They release more cytokines, they increase inflammation, and it's like this feedback loop. Huh cool.
Yeah, well that's wild.
Also horrible, but yes, yeah, fascinating.
So they're they're they're recognizing it as something bad and trying to do everything possible to kind of like nuke that site exactly.
And it's like the first time that your body is exposed to it, you just like make these T cells, these memory T cells, and they're just there like just to have on hand, right, And so that's part and because it's T cells that are being made and not just antibodies Okay, we're not just making antibodies against this compound.
You're making T cells that are going to be able to come in and so because of that, this is a delayed type response because it's not like you're just immediately binding antibody and then like you know, decimating things right there. Like these T cells are not everywhere all the time. There's like a certain number of them that might be in your body, and then they just have to happen to come into contact with that erusial the
second time. Does that make sense? Yeah, So that's why what the symptoms of this look like is that it's a delay after exposure. Okay, so generally around two days, about twenty four to forty eight hours, but usually about forty eight hours after exposure, that's when you first start to see the symptoms of poison ivy.
Cool, that's awesome.
Yeah, so we can talk a little bit more specifically about the symptoms. Although Aaron, I feel like you told us them pretty well.
Blister, the itching pain, don't run your arm or brash under hot water even though it feels really good, because it's horribly miserable afterwards. Oh, Like, it feels insanely like like such relief during it during during the hot water, and then and then after you're like, well cool.
Bites. Yes, yeah, it came back to bite me.
Yeah. Oh but I'm I'm curious to know more of the other like especially the smoke inhalation.
Well, so let's talk about kind of the general symptoms and what happens, and then I think we'll be able to understand what could happen if you get if you inhale it. Okay, Yeah, So, like I said, usually around two days, it can vary quite a lot. I think two weeks is like the highest end of when you could potentially still have symptoms after exposure, and at the low end it could be like a number of hours.
You first get areas of redness, so it gets just kind of red, and then you would get some small bumps. They usually start out as bumps, and even just this redness and bumps are super super super itchy, super itchy. And then over time those small bumps develop into vesicles, which are basically like if you think of what a chicken pox rash kind of looks like little clear, fluid filled bumps. So these bumps like filled with fluid, and
when it gets really bad, like what Aaron had. They can get all the way into what are called bullah. I think that's how you say it, or bulley, I don't know how you actually say it, which are ginormous fluid filled blisters, like kind of confluent, Like your whole arm could be one giant fluid filled blister. And if you get severe reactions, these bullet can get really really large. You can get really severe swelling or edema because of how much inflammation you're having just under the skin, and
it's incredibly uncomfortable. So if you inhale it, then that exact same inflammatory reaction is happening in your respiratory tract because the epithelia, so the cells that lie in your respiratory tract are not very different from your skin cells, so the reaction is going to be essentially the same, except that it's a small space and so there's no room for inflammation to happen, So you could like close off your respiratory tract.
I have heard of people dying from that.
Yeah, right. The other thing that can happen if you inhale it is that it can kind of more And I'm not exactly sure that pathophysiology of this specifically, but it can cause a more generalized dermatitis as well, where you get like that inflammatory reaction across your whole body rather than only where you were exposed. Huh weird, right, sounds awful. Yeah, without any treatment at all, it's a
long course of disease. It's anywhere from like three to six weeks to completely resolve, which is a very long time to be miserable. Yeah, thanks, Yeah, there are a couple of other really uncommon things that you can get. There's something that's called black spot dermatitis, which causes like something that kind of can look a little bit like a melanoma, like literally like a black mark on your
skin that is often permanent. But what I don't know about this is whether that it's not painful from what I understand, like it's just something that can happen as a result, but it's pretty uncommon. And then also what's really uncommon is you can get something called arithema multiform, which you can get from other things as well, but it's like widespread, super itchy bumps that can kind of come up all over your body, not just where you came into contact. So this would be like on top
of just having this hypersensitivity. Your body's going like, well, let's go full fledged. And like everywhere I.
Have heard about sort of like the rash spreading, which I know it's not contagious because like the oil you wash off your body, but I also heard that the rash can spread in the way that it's just like an inflammatory response.
Do you want to know a little more about it?
I do?
I desperately?
Do you are? You're totally right erin it's not contagious and like the fluid that's in those vesicles, it doesn't have any antigen in it. Okay, so you shouldn't open up blisters because you should not open up blisters. But if you did, like accidentally scratch open those blisters, you're not going to spread the rash by like itching it or anything like that, and you're not going to give it to anybody else. However, the oil itself can dry
on surfaces and remain antigenic. So if you got the oil on your clothes or under your nails and then you itch it, no, you can spread it.
Or if it's on your dog's first, if it's on your dog, exactly.
Shout out to my friend Amy.
And so that's why. Sometimes you can get new lesions, like a few weeks after initial onset, if it's just still somewhere, whether it's your clothes, your dog, your nails, whatever, Yeah, you can then continue to spread it.
Yeah I didn't that happen to our dear friend Sam from a chair that she sat on that had sat on it with like poison ivy pants and then continued to sit on the chair.
Oh no, yes, yeah, oh gosh awful, it's horrible. Yeah. And then, like you said, Aaron, washing it off turns out that only helps if you do it like right away. Within thirty minutes, pretty much any oil that you've come in contact with has been absorbed. So and there's at least some research that suggests that using soap can actually
spread the oil a little bit further. So just washing off with water if you can, Like if you you're like, oh no, I just touched poison ivy as quick as you can wash it off with just water, that can be helpful.
So the best bet really is just learn what the plant looks like and avoid it.
Avoid it. There have been what's really interesting and researching this is that I have found that there are a few barrier creams that exist that are supposedly effective at preventing a reaction, but some of them maybe actually make it worse, so I'm not sure, and they're not ones that I had ever heard of, so I'm not sure
how widely available they really are. But Dial Ultra, which is like dishwashing soap, oh yeah, as well as a couple other like soaps, and one of these, like very specific creams I've never heard of, seem to help prevent the a rash even after you've been exposed. So it's not like they're it's not washing the oil off your skin, but somehow it's helping to prevent the rash. I don't know it's worth a try. Dial is cheap, so this is.
Not what I mean.
Yeah, But otherwise treatment like you said, Aaron, colloidal oatmeal, baths, calamine lotion, and then if it gets really bad like what you had, oral steroids are really the thing that you need. Topical steroids can be helpful, but topical you need like high pretty high dose, and you can only use those on certain parts of your body and only for a certain amount of time, so they're not all
that helpful. Antihistamines this isn't a histamine response, guys, because that's a type one hypersensitivity reaction.
Yeah, I just learned that.
So that's why antihistamines aren't super helpful in this case.
Unless, like for me, it helped. It helped me sleep before I got before I was like resorted to steroids. But within like a few hours of steroids it everything was better, like it was Undel.
I'm so glad to the doctor.
Yeah, I know.
Are you stubborn like I am?
I'm very stubborn. I'm very bad about about being like accepting any sort of vulnerability and physic in my physical body. It's bad, real bad.
Feel you, I feel you.
I have questions for me or for Matt, for you, Aaron, Oh gosh, Okay. So, first of all, fifty to seventy percent of people are sensitive.
Yep.
Why what is the difference between sensitivity and insensitivity.
It's a really good question, and it's not clear because it's across it's across all ages, it's across ethnicities, it's across races, it's across like everything. It's anyone could be sensitive. So in large part it's probably exposure. Is our one of adults in the US exposed No definitely not. So would it be one hundred percent if everyone was exposed
a certain number of times? I don't know. I don't know, but it's a very interesting question that I could not fully find the answer to as to like what is it that makes one person specifically more sensitive than another person? Like you, Aarin, You went so much of your life not being sensitive, And it's not like you were only exposed twice in your life, right right, So I think
a lot of it is repeated exposure. So people who have occupational exposures are at much higher risk of being sensitive if they're constantly coming in contact with it.
Well, and that brings me to another question of about hypo sensitive, so like can you actually become desensitize yourself?
So desensitization has not been shown to be effective for poison ivy the way it is for like beastings and things like that, Okay, which is really interesting.
Well that leads me to thinking a lot a lot of other questions. But I think that this is where I need to direct them to Matt.
So fair phew, thank goodness, because I know my answers are just like, maybe, Matt, what the heck tell us all about it? Okay, but let's take a quick break first.
All right, So we've covered a lot of ground in this episode, but let's talk about the plants. And this is where things get really interesting. And this is why I always say it, but it's so true. I love doing crossovers because I learn so much. You send me down these weird, interesting roads, and they're never as simple or as straightforward of a narrative as I hope they are, or I think they are. I shouldn't say hope. I usually hope for more interesting things. And this is what
we found. So let's back up. We talk a lot about poison ivy and poison oak and to some extent, poison sumac, because these are plants that people, at least here in North America have a chance of running into having encounters with, whether gardening or hiking or doing anything out that. But if you back up for a second and look at the family that these plants belong to, and a cardiac, do you know what common food that you've probably all eaten same degree or another, Yes, mango.
But the name of this family is very specific to something that you would eat, say in trail mixe peanut, not peanut.
Sunfire seed.
Nope, eminem, it's very popular. You were closer with peanut, and it's very popular in some Asian foods. Cashews cashew, yes, oh,
cash cashew yes. So the group of plants we're talking about all come from what they call the cashew family anacardiac and anacardiac I would normally not use the common name, but the etymology of anacardiac literally means upward heart, which is in complete reference to the seed of the cashew apple, which if you've ever seen, if you've ever been in Central or South America and seen a cashew growing, a cashi is a small nut attached to the bottom of
a large apple like structure called the cashew apple, and that's what they're referring to with this. So Anacardiac is a large family of plants that's found all over the globe. We happen to know a lot of the temperate representatives. But if you've ever eaten mangoes or pistachios, you have also eaten members of this family. Now, urushiols are present in about a third of the family, so this is not something that's unique to any of the ones that
we're familiar with. This is something that the family's pretty well known for, and I actually recently I'll probably be releasing the episode in conjunction with this one. Spoke with the Deputy Executive director of the United States Botanical Garden, doctor Susan Pell, who just happens to have devoted her entire career to understanding this family of plants. And it's absolutely fascinating.
Yes, oh my gosh, we should have listened to that episode in prep for this, Matt.
I was so happy I did the interview. It'll come out whenever this does, but yeah, it's fascinating and she can speak to any number of botanists that have only gotten more sensitive over time to repeated exposure. So some of the most famous ones besides the mango, the cashew, pistachio, we've already covered poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. Now, if you're a United States botanist or in North America
doing botany, they are toxicodendron. But if you are a European, specifically certain people that work at Q they still lump them into russ. There's a lot of taxonomic uncertainty, but it would behoove you to familiarize yourself with some of the ones you're more likely to encounter. Nice, these quarantinies are doing a number on my vocabulary.
I love that your vocabulary gets better after the quarantines.
Mind is not I get more brave and trying to use those words. But as a group of plants, as you already mentioned, Rouchelle is a suite of compounds, not just one. And when you think about what is this doing for the plant, you know, the first thing I always go to is defense. You know, it's very easy to see why we would touch this, get a rash, and be like, I'm never messing with that plant again. But I want to go back to something Aaron said
about the delayed reaction. Yeah, does it make sense for a plant to have an anti herbivore defense compound that takes a day or two to kick in?
Well?
Also, isn't it only like humans and some primates that have a response to this herbivores don't?
Yes? Care, Yes, for all intents and purposes, this plant only affects us and some of the higher primates. Nothing else is affected by it. With the asallergy, it's it is by no means an anti herbivore defense In fact, everything from birds to goats, to deer, to mice and numerous insects will feed on the foliage and fruits of this plant, of all of these plants, with little to no problem. What the heck, Matt, Yeah, it's bizarre. We'll
get there. It's it's very bizarre. And that's what's really interesting is to think about how bad our reactions can be to it, and and it's really just us. We're very much alone in this.
It's just us, of course.
I really name it poison ivy too, right, Yeah, exactly, what a bird name it? What a deer name it?
Delicious berries? Yes, exactly. So as you can imagine the complications with the human immune response, it makes it very difficult group of plants to study in a lot of great detail, at least for that third that produce the
suite of compounds. So this is a woefully understudied sort of biochemical ecology, we'll say, But there has been enough interest in it, obviously because of how much it affects us, that there have been hints and insights gained over time, and some of the best hints as to what the function of these compounds are come from where they're produced and now it's a big family. It's a lot of
plants that have it. But you've got to figure were really only look at the ones that you know, we either are more likely to come in contact with or that we have some sort of economic use for. So most of the work has been done in poison ivy mangoes, cashews, and pistachios. So if you look at at least poison ivy, most of the urusral is contained within the young leaves,
the young stems, the bark, and the fruits. And interestingly enough, it's not found in the pollen, and poison ivy pollen happens to be a surprisingly common ingredient, or at least component of most commercial honey. Yeah, so we'll get into the ecological benefits of the species in a little bit. But when they looked at uryserral's function in poison ivy, they found that uruserols and its derivatives are really effective at killing certain types of pathenogenic fungi.
Oh, hence the early growth or whatever, so young leaves, young stems, things that are really tender, very susceptible to infection.
Now it's also been found but in a lab setting this is important. This is not found on the plant itself to be really good at preventing biofilms and killing a lot of bacteria. So you think about all the surface area of a plant is ripe for the taking in terms of being you know, a growth medium for bacteria. They don't wash themselves regularly, and you know they've got a lot of pores that are open to the environment.
So anything that can be present in a plant that can help prevent detrimental microbes from finding their way into the plant is probably a good thing. Huh yeah. Now, in mangoes, it's really interesting because the userols are highly concentrated in resin ducts, specifically and most importantly around the fruits, which is why a lot of people will get a reaction to eating mangoes, especially if you're getting mangoes that
have gone feral. Oh yeah, so there. It is present in the domesticated ones, but if you get them off the street from a sea that's just germinated, you are really risking it. I mean, your best bet is to avoid the skin because that's where it's concentrated. But even if you cut into a mango, what gets on the knife and then travels into the fruit can be enough to really mess your day up.
Or I should say, I have a question, if you're ready, about distribution of the plants.
Okay, yeah, yeah, we'll go there before I get into some of the interesting mango results.
Okay, So does erusial or like the amount of erusiol or anything like that, Does that follow any sort of geographic distribution in terms of latitude or in terms of like rainfall, or in terms of like predator or herbivore density or whatever.
That's a really cool question to ask, And I don't know the full picture of it, but I will say that it is very much present in both tropical and temperate representatives. But I will get into something in a little bit dealing with climate change and CO two that kind of lends to this, But no, I think overall, it's a compound that's very much found in varying degrees
in different tissues, maybe by latitude and habitat. But you know, poison ivy is gonna affect you just as much as pistachios or mangoes are, right.
Okay, So like it's not like, oh, this poison oak is more contains more russio than poison ivy it could be this leaf on this plant contains more roushiol. Like, there's more variability within the plant that across plant species.
So especially like Toxicodendron poison ivy. I don't know too much about poison oak, just because I grew up on the East Coast, but it is a highly variable species. And anytime you talk about plant chemistry, you know it varies with genetics in populations. So it's like, as my old botany professor you say, it's like good dope and bad dope. You never know what you're gonna get. Variation
within a species, it's important. So in mangoes, a lot of the usherwols are concentrated in these resin ducts, so you can picture them as sort of like veins, vascular tissue that goes through the rind of the mango, and
it's just chalk full of these compounds. And what they found is that in plantations or any sort of commercial production for mangoes, the more dense the resin ducts are in the tissue, the less the mangoes are affected by flies ovipositing flies looking to lay their eggs on the fruit. And what happens is when the female fly lands on and sticks her ovipositor into the tissue to lay her eggs.
She ruptures those resin ducts and it just floods the egg chamber, killing the resulting eggs and larger and so on. Top of all of that, the other part of it, too is just antimicrobial. So really, I think the impetus the evolutionary pressures that really set usural on its trajectory and why we see so many different variations within this class of compounds. It has to do with antimicrobial properties, infectious you know, disease causing microbes from fungi to bacteria and everything in between.
Oh my gosh, my brain is reeling. This is fascinating.
Yeah, so absolutely has nothing to do with us. In fact, we were up in Indiana dunes over the summer and there was a poison ivy covered in softfly larva that were just devouring it and birds eat it like crazy. I mean, you know they say leaves of three, Let it be. Let it be for a lot of reasons. Let it be, because you probably don't want to get what Aaron came down with and just be itchy scratchy,
having a horrible time. But it's also extremely ecologically important, at least toxickadendron radicans poison I. What we know is poison ivy, and I'm sure it extends to poison oak, and it definitely extends to poison sumac. Although you really have to work to find true poison sumac. They say you have to find a high quality bog. You have to trip and fall, and the first pint you will grab will be poison sumac. But they are ecologically extremely important.
Their foliage feeds many different species of animal, especially insects. There's lots of leaf and stem boring insects. There's lots of caterpillars of numerous different species of butterflies and moths. The flowers are visited by a wide variety of insects for pollination, mainly by beetles. Actually it is primarily a beetle pollinated species, but bees will find it too. And the fruits, oh my god, are the fruits of poison
ivy so extremely valuable. They're white. They're one of the few species that has a white fruit, and you can guarantee if it's a white fruit, at least in the east, you probably should leave it alone. But they're really high in fat, and they happen to appear around the same time that all of our migratory songbirds are making their way south, and so it is a vital component of their diet as they migrate south. And so if you have this plan on your landscape, it's not hurting you.
You're not gonna come into contact with it easily, consider leaving it. It's got beautiful fall foliage. It turns very red and contrasted with the white berries. It's really really pretty. And you know, birds disperse the fruit, that's how it gets around. So it's really important for them. But one of the most interesting things is what's going on specifically
with poison, ivy and climate change. And they used have you heard of the face experiments, the free air CO two enrichment, Yeah, where they basically set out all of this CO two enrichment stuff. It's waste products CO two from it was going to find its way into the atmosphere one way or another, but they concentrated in an area and look at how plants respond. So it's a way of trying to study what elevated CO two levels
are going to do for plants. While someone got it in their head to see what was going to happen with poison ivy in the context of CO two enrichment, And what they found is that poison ivy really loves extra CO two hanging around in the atmosphere. So CO two enrichment increased photosynthesis and poison ivy by seventy seven percent. I just want you to sit with that. Seventy seven percent more photosynthesis.
Wow.
Yeah, So not only did that lead to better performance, it led to bigger plants. Overall, they made better seeds that were more likely to germinate and grow just is extreme or more than the parents that produce them. But the most alarming of all is the production of this triene congener of urysherol increased by one hundred and fifty three percent. What which is the most allergenic form of usherol.
As if we needed one more reason to slow climate change, to slow.
Climate change, we're going to be taken over by mutant poison ie that makes the most allergenic.
And it's sadly it's a double whammy because not only are we increasing the amount of CO two in our atmosphere, we're creating through habitat destruction, especially of forests, A lot of edge habitat. So when you fragment a forest into tiny little chunks, all of those edges suddenly present a ton of really perfect niches for poison ivy to grow. So it's this double whammy of we're increasing its niche availability, which increases its numbers on the landscape, but we're also
making it extremely potent and vigorous in the process. Wow, which is good news for ecology in a lot of ways when you think about all of the ecological impacts, but in terms of like, you know, us being outside and enjoying being in the woods, which again I'm not sensitive, but I also don't want to push my luck for the reasons you mentioned. Uh, it's a really interesting thing.
And and there is some speculation that it's because you know, with CO two enrichment you get warmer temperatures, you tend to get higher humidity spikes could result in more fungi, bacterial infections, those sorts of things. So fascinatingly, yeah, it's it's a really cool group of plants, but like I said, woefully understudied for obvious reasons, And in talking with doctor Pell, she desperately wants grad students to work on this stuff. It's just kind of hard sell.
So if you're interested listeners, check out that's episode on in Defensive Plants, and then you can get all of that info.
Yeah, and and you know, in botany and in ecology, it's easy to think that like all the low hanging fruit have been taken, you know, all those early naturalists took all the fun easy stuff. There's this is proof that this is Yeah, there's areas that are ripe for exploring, so curious, brave minds.
And then why in humans does that same compound produce this hyper sensitivity response.
That's so Yeah, it's strange, and they're like analogues of it. Are are there compounds that are super similar where it's just sort of this coincidental like, oh, bad luck for humans, That's what I'm wondering.
Yeah, I think it's just kind of bad luck. You know, there's a lot of things that can be said of just kind of happenstance. Like people will talk like take THHC for instance, Cannabis is not producing that because it has the psychoactive effect on us. We just happen to
have receptors that are receptive to it, you know. Yeah, and so there's a lot of questions about sort of the happenstance of these evolutionary dynamics, this trajectory that takes a species or clative organisms in one direction, and humans are just so apt to try and experiment and move around the globe that we're bound to come into contact with this stuff on some point. And yeah, sometimes it affects us, sometimes it doesn't.
Evolution does not have a goal or an end point or a plan.
There is no agency and and that's that's what's so cool to think about, is just when you talk to even experts on this, they're like, yeah, I think it's just unfortunate for us.
Yeah, oops, how cool?
Yeah, oh man, but yeah, uh my recommendation is don't eat anything you can't identify and learn learn the species that can affect you.
Aaron, if these if these episodes don't convince people to learn at least the species around them that can affect them as I don't know what.
Will nothing and nothing?
Maybe what are my poison ivy rash We'll convince you.
There you go, and hopefully my mother if she's feeling willing.
Oh, this was a fun episode.
This was this was so thank you for Thank you for your suffering erin that inspired it it it.
I cannot say that there is anything that is worth that suffering, but this was a very nice little consolation. Fair enough, but no, I this was super fun. There's what a what a weird group of plants?
What a weird group of plants?
Yeah? Well, should we do sources? Let's sure? Okay, So, like you, Aaron, I found a couple of papers that were super great for the history that kind of like laid it all out. So one was called by Rostenberg from nineteen fifty five and Anecdotal Biographical History of Poison ivy, and then from by Vogel from two thousand Oriental Lacquer
Poison ivy and Drying Oils. And then finally there was an article on sciencehistory dot org called no Ill Nature The Surprising History and Science of Poison ivy in its Relatives, And that was actually a really interesting and great article. It had like tons of information in it.
So yeah, awesome. Yeah, I already mentioned my main one by Gladman in two thousand and six was really great, but I do have a few others that I will certainly post on our website. This podcast will kill you dot com.
Yeah, so I had a bunch of sources because I had to kind of search high and low for people that have braved this. But some of the bigger ones I pulled from I will obviously send you the links for all of the ones where resinducts in the Mango fruit a Defense System by Joel nineteen eighty. There was beetle interactions with poison ivy and poison oak by us in China two thousand and five, Insects feeding on poison oak Russ toxicodendron by Howden at All nineteen ninety one.
And the climate change one was biomass and toxicity Responses of poison ivy to elevated atmospheric CO two by mohan at All two thousand and six.
Nice, awesome.
Yeah, we will post all of these references and links to them on our website. This podcast will kill you dot com, so if you want to do some continued reading, check it out there.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Well, thank you Matt so much for coming on and doing this really fun episode like this is just just like one of the most fun I think this was nice and relaxing.
Weirdly, it was even though you had to relive your darkest days erin.
I mean honestly, like time is meaningless at this point, you.
Are the same.
And also if my suffering can in some way alleviate the suffering of others and like prevent their exposure to poison ivy, that's great.
That's great. Thank you both so much, as always for having me. It is a wonderful blast to talk with you, and I always learned so much. Check me out in Defensive Plants podcast and Defensive Plants and all major social media outlets. If you google it you will find me. Stay tuned a lot of good things over the horizon.
Yeah, definitely. If you're not already following Matt on all the things, make sure that you are, because it's like, oh my gosh, it's incredible.
The insta, I'll say again, is.
Oh yes, incredible, just the best.
Beautiful truth.
I have a lot of fun with it.
Oh you do agree.
But thank you for what you two are doing. You are putting out just such wonderful and meaningful content, So thank you again. And your fans are just fantastic. I love interacting with them.
So they put the fan in fantastic.
Oh no, all right, I'm doing.
Oh boy, Well, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode in all of our episodes, and thank you to you fantastic listener, fantastic band.
Oh I won't poison on any of you.
Seriously, thank you so much for listening. We love getting to make this podcast.
Thank you so much. Chess. Well, until next time, wash your hands you feel the animals.
Sorry to step on your toes.
I loved it.
You're gonna be itchy, kids, You're just gonna be itchy.