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Education
July 15, 2025
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MWBA Board
When parts of the forest were reopened after the 2009 Station Fire and the 2020 Bobcat fire, volunteers encountered a ton of the flowering plant known as Poodle Dog Bush (PDB). We expect to encounter more when we start to rebuild from the 2025 Eaton Fire. If you haven’t heard of Poodle Dog Bush before, listen up and keep your eyes open for it on the trails.
Poodle Dog Bush flourishes in a post fire eco system in Southern California. It has deep roots and helps retain soil so other plants can re-establish. Unfortunately, touching it can bring on a horrible reaction similar but possibly worse than Poison Oak. Unlike the well known oak, Poodle Dog is not oil based and cannot be washed off with a good soap. The plant’s tiny hairs (which are on the flowers, leaves, & stalks) stick to you upon contact. Reactions can take 3-10 days to appear and up to a month for the nasty rash to subside.
Poodle Dog Bush is easy to spot when it’s in full bloom. If you encounter it, stop and take a good look at the plant. The hairs are on the leaves too and even once the flowers disappear this summer the Poodle Dog can still leave you with a reaction. Our volunteers have noticed that it appears easier to get a reaction from Poodle Dog when the plants are lush and green at the start of the season. During trail work, keep an eye out for a thin layer of black, sappy tar that appears on clothing, tool heads and handles when cutting and working around PDB. If you see the black tar appearing on yourself or your tools, you are certainly getting exposed to PDB irritants.
Just like Poison Oak some people don’t react to it at all; however, if you want to be on the safe side we’d recommend covering your skin on trails where Poodle Dog is flourishing. Sun sleeves work great in the summer as a protective barrier and are cooler than a long sleeve jersey or arm warmers. Long socks can help keep the plant from touching your shins. We encourage our volunteers to carry a change of clothes and a plastic bag for riding/work clothes for when returning from trail work days where we know the plant will be present. MWBA also provides full tyvek suits for cutting the most serious PDB infestations.
When you get home, make sure you wash PDB-exposed clothes separately from your regular laundry. Clothing can retain some of the irritants in PDB and specific outfits have been known to re-irritate some of our volunteers. The best way our volunteers have found to neutralize a potentially PDB-soiled gear is a long wash (use the the "pre soak" function on your washing machine) or soak (use a bathtub or bucket) with inexpensive dishwasher powdered detergent instead of laundry detergent. Dish detergent can be a skin irritant, so please wear gloves and consider a small test garment before committing to this cleanup method.
Below are a number of good articles online about Poodle Dog Bush that have been published over the years. They are still relevant and great resources:
CORBA's blog post about Poodle Dog Bush (2011)
The Pacific Crest Trail Association’s blog post on Poodle Dog Bush (2013)
LoweLifes Respcetable Citizens Club on PDB (2024)
LAist.com - Hikers, beware: Eaton Fire brings out whimsically named poodle-dog bush (2025)
This article was originally written by MWBA board alumni Erik Hillard. It was updated in 2025 to include new resources and gear cleanup reccomendations.
