Virtual Ranger Program: Poison

Hello everyone. Welcome to Shenandoah National Park. I am Ranger Lauren, and welcome to this beautiful, lush national park. Now of course people come here to enjoy the beautiful mountain vistas, to take in all of the beauty that we have here but, do they know, that we are surrounded by poison! No, I’m not talking about the 80’s hair band, I am talking about the stuff that Professor Plum used in the Billiards Room, the stuff that is the centerpiece of 41 out of 66 of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, the fate of Romeo, Juliet, and Hamlet ultimately the satiating end of King Joffrey. So poison is this beautiful substance, that of course, can cause illness, or even death, when absorbed or ingested by a human form, and it has been used by by families and kingdoms for centuries. not only in plays, and in a fantastic HBO series, but in the five kingdoms I’m talking about: animals, plants, bacteria, protists, and fungi. All kingdoms trying to outwit each other in this evolutionary arms race that is here - present today in Shenandoah National Park.

As a Park Ranger it is my job to make sure that 01:30 - you stay poison free, and there you might come in contact, you might brush shoulder, you might brush face even with poison ivy. Now if you have come in contact with poison ivy before, you’re sure not to forget it. I’d love to hear your poison ivy stories down in the comments section below. Poison ivy is incredibly notorious, and it is so because it causes a disgusting, blistery, red rash anywhere that it touches. And it’s not the leaf that’s poisonous - all parts of it are, from the leaf, the stem, the berries, you name it, it’s all because of a compound called “urushiol’.

02:08 - Urushiol is incredibly potent and it causes basically our immune systems to attack healthy skin cells. So it’s not the poison that’s attacking you - it’s your own body! Oh the betrayal! Oh the trickery! brilliant! This is poison at its finest, if you will. And the cool thing about urushiol is it doesn’t take a lot to have big effects - about two chapsticks worth of urushiol would cause enough to give everyone in the world that disgusting, beautiful, red rash that you that poison ivy is so famous for. Minty fresh. Anytime that you think that you may have come in contact with poison ivy, it’s incredibly important to rinse off, soap up, and then rinse off again - to push all of that oil that might be on your skin off of it, so you can stay silky smooth. Now the problem is is that poison ivy is incredibly, morphologically diverse which is Ranger speak for - it looks really different, in lots of different ways; it can be a shrub, it can be a vine, it can just be a little plant on the ground.

Its leaves can be serrated, or they could 03:18 - be smooth, sometimes leaves are even waxy; so this huge diversity in what this plant can look like can be hard for you to identify. But there’s one thing that you have to remember: “leaves of three, leave it be”. So let’s do a little quiz here. I’m going to throw up four different images of different plants you could find out here in Shenandoah, and which one do you think is poison ivy? Yeah, it’s important to remember that “leaves of three”; things like Virginia creeper can be on a vine, but they’re not going to have those leaves of three. Ultimately this rule of three is going to be the thing that keeps you safe, and not covered in a rash. Awesome! Poison ivy can be found throughout the Park.

So, you might be asking yourself, “Wait, why 04:10 - doesn’t all the wildlife have a rash? Why are we the only ones that react?” Right? It’d be a completely different park, if you all drove here to Shenandoah, get out of the car and out in the bushes are just red, rashy, alopecia, balding deer. Right? This would be completely different! And that’s because our deer here don’t react to urushiol, or poison ivy. It is only humans, and a few species of primates that do react. It’s because, not only do they have fur that protects them, but their skin chemistry is completely different from ours, leaving us, the only ones, that are susceptible to the evil, brilliant, rash that is formed by poison ivy. You might be thinking to yourself, “Ranger Lauren, this doesn’t make any sense.

“Why would poison ivy spend all of this energy 04:58 - making poison that doesn’t even help itself defend against ferocious deer fawns, or fluffy birds?” Well, you’re right my friend the eternal enemy of plants is in fact, herbivores, things that eat plants. Right? Plants can’t move, so they make poison to defend themselves; but they also make poison to defend themselves against other things - things that we can’t necessarily see. Two of big kingdoms are: protists and bacteria, right? Little tiny microbes that we can’t see, and just like you and I can get infections, so can plants; so that is why poison ivy has urushiol flowing through all of its sap; essentially it makes its own Clorox wipes, if you will. so you and I have to race down the aisles of Walmart fighting each other for the last tube of Clorox wipes. Our poison ivy just makes them in its own body! Pretty crazy, when you think about it.

And plants are tremendously good 05:57 - at making poison all around. Now milkweed might seem like an unassuming plant, but it is anything but. Even without its bloom, our milkweed here is a heart stopper. So if we were to look at the milky substance it makes within its leaves, in there we can find cardiac glycosids, which literally have the power to stop your heart. Poison! Am I right? So cool! Now our milkweed is this poisonous, because it has been embroiled in a battle for thousands of years at this point; under a relentless siege by caterpillars. Now let’s go to the battle scene now.

06:40 - So my caterpillar friend here, it should be dead. Our milkweed has tons of poison ready for it; but here we are watching it work it’s magic. This caterpillar is immune to milkweed’s poisons; and what we are looking at is an evolutionary battle as our milkweed gets more poisonous, our monarch caterpillar gets more immunity; more poison - more immunity; more poison - more immunity; more defense - met by more counter defense! Over and over and over again! It’s just like what your sports coach taught you, right? Defense wins games! In this game of course, is evolution. Monarchs are not only immune to the poison, but they become the poison. As they become their butterfly form, they become flying poison, and you will be able to see them flying through the skies in their vibrant patterns; warning predators of their poison, their poison being; and birds that decide to take a snack of our monarch will quickly start vomiting; and that’s why our lovely monarch can wear such sassy, wonderful colors, like this these vibrant colors say to predators, “Stay away ! I am poisonous!” And that’s why you can see monarchs flitting about fields carelessly, right? Because they aren’t scared they have the wrath of the monarch! Who-o-o! And just like our monarch with its brilliant color, and its vibrant pattern, our salamanders also have them too.

Salamanders, 08:14 - all of them, if not most of them, are in fact poisonous. The cool thing is is that their different colors and stripes mean the same thing as our monarch butterfly. Now you might be like, “Whoa! Stay away from the salamanders!” And you should, because they’re very, very, very fragile creatures; their skin is super absorbent, so when we touch salamanders, not only are we at risk of harming ourselves, but we also could hurt the salamanders. The salts, the oils, the bug spray, the sunscreen that are on our hands can ultimately hurt and possibly kill our wonderful Shenandoah salamanders. Whether you are high on the mountain tops, in the meadows, forests, or streams, here in Shenandoah, you are going to be surrounded by poison! Now the story of poison is rich and complex.

It is a timeless story that 09:05 - is far more universal than that of two pre-pubescent star crossed lovers, or doomed tyrants. It is the story of five kingdoms - competing not for glory, not for greatness, but for survival! So we are out here enjoying Shenandoah National Park, we can find poison in lots of places. Now of course we’re not going to find it in our bears, or any apex predators; those that are the top of the food chain. We not need to be afraid of poison when it comes to them (other things maybe). But poison is everywhere, and we can do our part to defend ourselves.

Ultimately 09:42 - poison is a defense, so it’s important to remember to stay on the trail, and respect wildlife! And hopefully you will be able to find beauty, and peace out here in Shenandoah and allow it to “poison” your mind. Thank you so much for joining me here today. I hope to see you out on the trail soon. Bye. .