Poison ivy as a house plant?

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by Threerun

Airborne urushiol can cause people sensitive to it breathing problems.

We had to vacate a campground that was loaded with poison ivy- she was definitely having a hard time breathing. Got out of there it got better. I couldn’t imagine keeping it in an enclosed space.

Very good point. It's one thing to avoid exposure to irritating sap, oils, or micro thorns by wearing gloves when you need to touch the plant, but how do you control spread of an aerosol? Some people are so sensitive to urushiol they don't even need to touch poison ivy/oak to suffer a reaction. There are so many other potentially beautiful houseplants to choose from!

[Threerun]

Originally Posted by Parnassia

Very good point. It's one thing to avoid exposure to irritating sap, oils, or micro thorns by wearing gloves when you need to touch the plant, but how do you control spread of an aerosol? Some people are so sensitive to urushiol they don't even need to touch poison ivy/oak to suffer a reaction. There are so many other potentially beautiful houseplants to choose from!

That is my wife. We had a lot of poison ivy in the woods at our property when we lived in eastern panhandle West Virginia. My wife had to use a nebulizer until I sprayed every dang one of them dead.

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by Northrick

How do you get a 153 year old tree that small? I going out on a limb here and assume you are not 153 years old. I get that the bonsai stuff keeps it small, but where do you get one from nature that's still small and 50-100 old? We've got a lot of old trees beat down from the weather here in Alaska but even those tend to be at least several feet tall.

Note the bend in the 3" thick trunk. What happens in the high mountains is that a seedling tree is bent over by the weight of the snow, from October to about July. It's much like when we do wiring for shape, but it's nature doing it. The trunk keeps that shape but tries to go up in summer, but then again the snow come.
We went for a hike at Mt. Rose (Nevada) and there were a lot of firs that went up, then at a right angle, then up again, indicating that there was probably one year with an exceptionally long heavy snow.

When we collect trees we have to get a permit from the agency managing the forest, and usually are limited to trees under 24". This one is still only 20". What keeps it small is being rootbound in the shallow pot, and constant pruning to prevent shoots that would go straight up.