Peche Island Get-together (tonnes of pics)

Looks like lots of fun and education. A great combination if you ask me.
Which knife is this one? I like!
DSC_0136.jpg
 
Dougo, I'm confused by your post.

Are you saying that their is no such plant as Poison Oak?
 
tonym said:
Dougo, I'm confused by your post.

Are you saying that their is no such plant as Poison Oak?
Click to expand...

This is the information that was passed on to me. There are two types: poison ivy (or oak when it gets a woody stalk going) and poison sumac...Basically, posion "oak" is the name given to poison ivy when it looks more like a tree than a herbaceous little PITA.

The professor who told me this has 38 years under his belt as a field biologist and botany professor, so I am putting alot of weight on what he said...I will do some more looking around though...
 
man.. those are some great pics guys....:thumbup: looks like a fun time for sure..
we had our Cali. BF get-together this weekend.... it was a blast..i have a lot of pics i need to sort through...
 
dougo83 said:
kgd...i am not going to read through all of the response right now because I am on a slow connection at work, but "poison oak" is a misnomer. There is not such thing. It is simply a fully matured poison ivy plant. It tends to end up with a moderately thick woody stalk.*


also, it could be a box-elder...they look kind of the same...the only difference I know of, outside of leaf pattern, is that box elder ends up huge...

*information compliments of Dr. Laurence Meissner, Botany Prof, Concordia U Texas
Click to expand...

Not so, Doug, depends on who you listen to. Here's a link to the USDA. (You have to click on the yellow 'Go' button to the left of 'No Data Found'.) If it was just a fully matured Poison Ivy plant, the species names would not differ.

An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States & Canada, Nathaniel Lord Britton / Hon. Addison Brown, Dover, ? , ISBN# 0-486-22642-5 Vol. 2, page 484, lists Poison Oak as a separate species, calling it Toxicodendron toxicodendron and giving it a range different than the USDA. Britton and Brown has been used as the text book at Sir Sanford Fleming College, at least as far as my buddy says, who is a fish and game technologist.

The Manual of Vascular Plants, Gleason/Cronquist, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1963, page 448, which has also been used as a textbook, IIRC, lists only 2 species - Rhus radicans, which he also calls Poison Oak, and Rhus toxicodendron, which he also calls Poison Oak. (Rhus was the genus name for Poison Ivy, which subsequently was changed to Toxicodendron to differentiate from the non-poisonous Rhus species, such as Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)

So you see it's a pretty murky playing field.

Keep in mind, common names only go so far, that's why binomials are important, especially on an international forum.

Also keep in mind, a lot of professors are quirky to start with (Talfuchre, for example :rolleyes:) but, of course, this does not include kgd. :D

Also in botany fields there are 'clumpers' and 'splitters'. Take Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) for example. The 'splitters' say there are more than 1,000 species in North America, the 'clumpers' say a few hundred, IIRC. Your professor may be a clumper, and as such doesn't recognize all the different species, and takes exception with those that do.

In Ontario, we have 2 types of Poison Ivy. Toxicodendron radicans - this is the scrambling, trailing, climbing vine version, and T. rydbergii, the shrub version that rarely gets more than about 3 feet high. This is according to Shrubs of Ontario, James H. Soper / Margaret L. Heimburger, ROM, 1994, ISBN# 0-88854-283-6.

Bottom line - as long as you know what the bad boys look like, that's all that counts.

Doc
 
Magnussen said:
Thanks Doc.... wish you could have made it out, my friend. Ken looked like an old pro at the firebow... you would have been pleased.

I kept repeating myself (the BF crew was probably getting annoyed) that it is better to know a few skills, intimately... than to read a library of W&SS books, never having LIVED the skill, yourself. Cease living your life as a "Human Being" and become a "Human Doing"!!!!


Rick
Click to expand...

Wish I could have made it out too, Rick.

Ken was a natural, right from the word 'go', once he saw how fast the drill had to turn. I think that is a misconception by a lot of people. He also looked good with the hand drill, but the particular set of muscles involved, were not used to it, I guess.

Mine were screaming as well. I got to start practising again. Those particular muscles tend to atrophy, rather quickly, when not being used.

Doc
 
DOC...the way it was explained to me, I just called my prof on an unrelated topic and decided to ask, was that it could be a different species, but I couldn't get the pics to him. On the subject of the binomials how much research does the ICBN put into naming? I mean, is it possible that someone sent the mature (woody) sample and someone else sent the immature (herbaceous) sample and that is how we end up with two different binomials? I dunno how they determine their naming, outside of the Law of Priority, so I thought I'd ask. Like I said, I will do some more research on my own. It could be that the two are the same down here and that a true "posion oak" does not exist in Texas. Since I do not have the tools to perform hormone tests, I suppose I will have to break out the old dichotomous key and get to work...ugh...
 
dougo83 said:
On the subject of the binomials how much research does the ICBN put into naming?
Click to expand...

Doc is reference different sources here.... The ISBN #'s (International Standard Book Number) are book references only.

According to all my references... the two are different species all together... you have to take common names with a grain of urishol....he he
 
Magnussen said:
Doc is reference different sources here.... The ISBN #'s (International Standard Book Number) are book references only.

According to all my references... the two are different species all together... you have to take common names with a grain of urishol....he he
Click to expand...

I know this...however ISBN is not ICBN (International Committee on Binomial Nomenclature) ;):cool:
 
Magnussen said:
Oh ...... he he..... I'll shut up now.....
Click to expand...

Haha...I recently had a very similar foul-up with the same term. I had a brain fart during an exam and referred to this committee throughout the entire essay as an ICBM (Inter-continental Ballistic Missile) :rolleyes:
 
Magnussen, please look to the top of this page. What knife is that?
 
Damn, I am envious of all the fun you guys had on that trip

Oh...and as for the knives...too ugly to sell my @$$ Rick's just using that as an excuse not to let go of them. I love the leather handle scales on the Bushlore I bought from him, trully one of the best knives in the house, one of the best I have ever worked with, I'm still trying to figure out how to con my daughter out of it without being too obvious about it....I guess I'd really need a bigger one though so she's safe for the moment.
 
Wow, some great pics K, that camera is amazing.:thumbup:

Hey rick, what type of compass do you have on you watch band?
 
dougo83 said:
DOC...the way it was explained to me, I just called my prof on an unrelated topic and decided to ask, was that it could be a different species, but I couldn't get the pics to him. On the subject of the binomials how much research does the ICBN put into naming? I mean, is it possible that someone sent the mature (woody) sample and someone else sent the immature (herbaceous) sample and that is how we end up with two different binomials? I dunno how they determine their naming, outside of the Law of Priority, so I thought I'd ask. Like I said, I will do some more research on my own. It could be that the two are the same down here and that a true "posion oak" does not exist in Texas. Since I do not have the tools to perform hormone tests, I suppose I will have to break out the old dichotomous key and get to work...ugh...
Click to expand...

Hey Dougo,

Here are some sites to aid you in your research of the 3 different plants.

Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans)
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/savanna/plants/poison_ivy.htm

Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_poison_oak

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook/trees/tove.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top