Poison ivy, whose wood can trigger an allergic rash on contact just like its foliage can, might actually be easier to identify in the off-season when its “leaves of three” are absent. When attached to a tree, Toxicodendron radicans is given away by the thousands of adventitious roots (the kind that grow from nonroot tissue) shooting out of its thick main stem, giving it a hairy, rope-like appearance. But sometimes poison ivy grows as a standalone shrub, like this small shoot jutting out of the bearberry at Bearberry Hill, found off North Pamet Road in Truro. Here the identifier is an overwintered cluster of white berries, poisonous to us but a healthy meal for birds like the downy woodpecker or tufted titmouse.
