Just cut an insignificant amount of wisteria back (just where it blocked the light) and now the skin of my arms is going crazy! Does anyone have a quick fix for this? I rinsed with soap and water, but so far no luck. How about oil?
It’s ok, I am not dying, I did not eat it, I am not going to A&E, I don’t need a doctor. It’s just an annoying itch!
I’m not finding anything scary by searching for wisteria, so chances are you only have some contact dermatitis.
Take an over-the-counter antihistamine, use some hydrocortisone cream on the rash, take a cool bath with a cup of oatmeal mixed in, and keep your arms covered so you don’t rip them up scratching. Just the regular old precautions you’d do for any contact dermatitis.
Fels-Naptha soap works for poison ivy, so maybe it will help.
On a related note, how exactly do you control the wisteria? I had a wisteria plant in my back yard that nearly ate my deck. Took me almost two years to finally get rid of it. Tried trimming it, but that was a dead-end…eventually decided to simply chop the whole thing out. Took it down to the roots below ground level. A few weeks later…giant shoots surrounding the deck, pushing through, etc. Took trimming and repeated applications of brush killer over the next two years before the darn thing finally died.
Thanks for the responses! Yep, contact dermatitis, thanks phouka. I swear the crazy itching also meddled with my brain. I had to go to an open air Shakespeare production, still itching like mad. Then found some Wasp-Eze in the car: magic! Such wonderful, glorious relief.
Jman, your wisteria sounds naughtier than mine! Mine grows up the verandah and looks very pretty. I just cut it back in winter. It does try to get into the cracks of the roof of the verandah, but I tug out the shoots. There’s another in the pear tree, I don’t do anything about that. I’ll probably need to get rid of that at some stage, but it looks so nice. It’s never made me itch before, and in summer I usually just snip little bits when it gets out of hand.
If you like the way they look, I know they can be grown as a small tree. You could try that, that way it wouldn’t ruin the deck, or other things near it.
Huh, I’ve never experienced or even heard of wisteria causing itching. When I was young there were so many wisteria vines in the woods that we could climb part of the way up a tree and walk across the top of the wisteria. My friends and I never had any issues as a result (oh, we had issues, just not from wisteria).
As far as getting rid of it - about as easy as getting rid of a free loading relative.
Yeah, also never had an issue before, and normally when I’m full-on cutting it back later in the season I’ll be on a ladder with my face right up in the plant and everything. I’ve also cut just little snippets in summer before without this issue. But I think it must’ve just been more sap than usual, because of the time of year?
Anyway, I’d googled a bit and it did say it happens sometimes on several different websites, but I couldn’t find any advice on how to make the itching stop. I was actually thinking more of vinegar/water/dock leaves solution, less of a benzocaine and anti-histamine solution. Most of these relatively mild plant itches have a folk remedy. But when the relief came in the form of Wasp-Eze, I could not complain. 