Trees with 3 leaflets

[tslade]

Someone on ************ is asking about poison ivy growing as a tree. He is seeing an 8 foot tree with a 2" trunk and wonders if it is poison ivy and needs to be removed. He is in Kentucky. I know that poison ivy can grow as a shrub and can be quite large as a vine. I have become quite good at identifying it as I encounter tons of it here in Oklahoma. I worked on a tree a couple of years ago that had leaves that looked almost exactly like poison ivy. This was a very large tree with a 1-2' trunk. Definitely a tree and not poison ivy. I have a book called The Complete Trees of North America by Thomas Elias. (excellent book - out of print) When I was trying to ID this tree, I found 2 trees in the book that had the 3 leaflets like poison ivy. One was the common hops tree and I don't know what the other one was. It would take a while to look through the whole book to find it. Anyway, wondering if anyone can tell us anything about trees that have leaves that look like poison ivy and how to positively ID such a tree.

Thanks,
Terry Slade

 

[tslade]

Here's the thread over there:
http://www.************/showthread.php?threadid=28696

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

There are a number of trees with a triple compound leaf, a number of maples come to mind.

 

[Nickrosis]

Buy a key!

I had to buy William Harlow's <b>Fruit Key & Twig Key to Trees & Shrubs</b> for a class, and I carry it around with me all the time. You start with simple things like opposite or alternate, tree or shrub-like, chambered, continuous, or hollow pith, etc. Then it will walk you to the genus and species pretty well. As a warning, they come with steep learning curves, and they still can be tough to use with practice. Great learning tool.

Nickrosis

 

[Toddppm]

I would bet it's a Box Elder tree, an ashleaf Maple. Looks just like poison ivy to me, but it has more leaves along the stem. Theres alot of them where we go camping by the river, met a guy there with his kids and he swore up and down it was ivy so I rubbed the leaves all over my arms, he looked at me like I was crazy. The ones that will really fool you are when theres so much poison ivy growing around the trunk it looks like it's leaves on the tree, I've messed up a couple bids to trim or remove trees because I didn't realize it was there, was looking further up and didn't notice it.
The easiest way to tell if it's poison ivy is to look at the vine or roots , it will have red hairs holding it to the tree or on the roots if it's standing alone.

 

[Treeman14]

Most likely Acer cissifolium, Ivy-Leaf Maple. Or Acer triflorum, Three-Flowered Maple.
And Todd's right, the red root hairs are the give-away.

 

[coydog]

my bet is box elder too. one way to tell is to look at the stems growing out of the branch, if they are symetrical ie. opposite , then it is probably a box elder or other maple.