Virgina creeper has 5 leaflets and poison ivy has 3. Your vine looks like blackberry bramble to me, which may have 3 to 7 leaflets.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am pretty sure it is not blackberry either, because there are no brambles, or "thorns", or prickles. Just the amazing adhesive properties along the whole length of the stem.

Leslie

Leslie, does it have a smell?

I wonder if what you have is Japanese hops (Humulus japonicus).

The description says the leaves have 5 lobes, but I notice that in some pics the two lobes nearest the petiole are divided to make it seem that the leaf has 7 lobes.

One description that seems to fit your vine is at
http://muextension.missouri.edu/explore/wildthing/japanesehops.htm

Close-up of one leaf is at http://tncweeds.ucdavis.edu/photos/humja02.jpg

Link to a good pic of the whole plant is below.

-- BC --

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1349947}}

I think you may be right bc. The pics definitely look like it and what I read indicates that it is very fast growing and invasive, which certainly fits. The one puzzle is that Japanese hops is described as having downward pointing prickles on the stems and mine is not prickly but sticky. Maybe mine is still young and the hairs will mature into prickles if I gave them the chance -- NOT!

Unless someone comes up with a better guess, I think I will give you the nonexistent prize. It is on my state's noxious weeds list so it is outta here!

Thank you so much,
Leslie

The 'prickles' aren't very big -- they aren't big thorns like you would see on a rose or a blackberry stem. One description called the prickles 'stiff hairs'. The web site below calls them 'hooked hairs', which sounds close to your description that called them velcro. Apparently the vines use these hairs to cling and climb on things.

I was amazed to find that people plant these things in their gardens as ornamentals, and the web site below calls them "desirable gardening and commercial species"!

Hope you can get rid of yours.

--BC --

Here is a link that might be useful: Humulus japonicus vines are covered with hooked hairs

You definitely have it! I came home and took a very close look at the stems of the remaining plants and sure enough hooked hairs covers it. And if I stroke it from the
top toward the ground it is fairly smooth whereas if I stroke upward it grabs my skin. downward pointing indeed! Bad news and extremely invasive and fast growing. banned in quite a number of states. Thank you so much for helping me ID it!

Leslie

Not sure about your weed, but up here in pa if you use mushroom soil to add humus to your beds, you get a vine which looks like yours. The blasted stuff feels very prickery and grabs at you because the entire thing is covered with small hairs which act like Velcro and hang on to anything they touch. I've never been able to identify it for certain, but luckily it's an annual and can be killed out by weeding for 2 seasons to get all the delayed germinating seeds.

George

I'm pretty sure I have the same thing. I live in NH so I have no idea how this thing is growing in my woods; it's not on our invasive species list. I was baffled and kept thinking I was seeing things when this huge vine started climbing up my birch trees and crawled over to some pine trees. It ended up being over 30 ft. in the two weeks I watched it grow. I looked for hours to find anything that resembled it. I pulled it out by the root stem which is apparently all you can do. There's a good picture of this and other invasives in this link.

Here is a link that might be useful: invasives