A few days after visiting areas from Paso Rablos to the Monterey and Carmel areas, I developed itchy bumps on my knee. Within a few weeks, they have lightly spread across my torso and arms. Oddly, I was in dress clothes or in the hotel 99% of the time. There was a cloud of black flies outside my room (exterior corridors), and I did stop at one scenic, ocean overlook just below the town of Carmel. (I was in shorts at that time.)
Besides the plants that always come to mind (poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac), are there other such plants in this broad region of which I should be aware? I have no idea what I might have brushed against, if anything. I tried Google, but I only found repetitive lists of common plants that are only poisonous if you eat them.
Stinging nettle perhaps? It seems to grow all over the place, and any skin contact produces symptoms like you describe.
Surprisingly, it also has a history of being used for food and medicinal uses. You just have to harvest and prepare it right, all without touching it. :eek:
If you walked bare-legged through a meadow, there are a few things like wild aster or buttercup, or some introduced weeds like comfrey, borage, etc. that might give you a rash. Not common.
Nettle has a transient effect, only a day or two at most.
The little flies don’t bite, we don’t have those nasty little noseeums here. And it doesn’t sound like mosquito bites.
We only have poison oak here (not ivy) but you would have to have been out in the woods and brushed against it, or petted a dog who had been in it (the very sensitive can get it this way). However, the symptom of a few bumps at point of contact, and then a light rash over the torso where there could have been no contact, is something my husband gets when he works in poison oak infested woods, so that’s possible.
Maybe you have something else, not plant related, maybe an allergic reaction to a detergent ingredient or something.
Also it is Paso Robles (pass of the oaks).
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I’d bet a good chunk of pretend money that poison oak is indeed the culprit. And you need not be in full woodlands to encounter it. That little shit of a plant is ubiquitous in chaparral-scrub as well and is just generally weedy.
California does not have poison ivy or poison sumac. Just poison oak. I agree that nettles would go away much quicker. “Some guy who eats everything” has some good recipes.
See a dermatologist if it persists. Maybe now as it’s been awhile. Without seeing it, animals or a fungus might be the culprit as well. I doubt your torso got any contact, at least the direct kind.
Absolutely poison oak. Lots of it around any scenic turn out south of Carmel. Touch nettles, and you know it immediately; they sting.
If it’s spreading weeks later, you still have the oil somewhere. Wash all the clothes that you wore then, any other clothes they might have been packed with, and anything else at home that those clothes may have touched before they were washed.
Lots and lots and lots and lots of poison oak! It’s the most common of all wild plants in California. It grows as a spreading ground cover; and as a sprawling vine; and as a climbing vine; and as a shrub. It loses its leaves in the winter and looks like a field full of bare dead twigs, but every part is still poison! Only humans (and maybe some other primates?) are badly affected by it. Cows eat it. Mangetout may have eaten it. I thought that link to “Some guy who eats everything” (about eating nettles) would be Mangetout. There are lots of web sites with nettle recipes.
And nearby Atascadero officially likes to translate its name as “A place of much water”. But it actually, literally, means “A place where you get stuck” which I think refers to a swamp or bog. Certain elements in City of El Paso de Robles refer to the place as Mudtown. It’s also the home of Atascadero State Hospital, a prison/hospital for the criminally insane. Definitely a place where someone can get stuck!
Just a follow-up: I’ve heard you’ll know if you touched stinging nettles. I understand they sting almost immediately. The evidence points to Poison Oak. It is finally subsiding, but slowly.
Yep, nettles hurt. Also the discomfort usually subsides relatively quickly IME. Poison oak can linger like a bad houseguest.
I had an absurd Benny Hill-level encounter with nettles involving a stomach issue, being far from a toilet and sensitive portions of the anatomy. It’s such a ridiculously contrived-sounding story I don’t usually bring it up. But nettles do suck.
There are lots of web sites with nettle recipes.
It’s also the home of 
