[trentearl]

Your brain eventually learns to categorize plants into different buckets by noticing attributes. Poison Ivy is a vine but can trick people into thinking it's tree or a ground cover.

If it's showing as a vine you just have to categorize the attributes of the other vines. Where I'm from there are only 3 or 4 common vines. Grape, Virginia Creeper and Poison ivy. Also there are non-natives: kudzu and english ivy, but they exist in more specific contexts.

Your brain learns to categorize the attributes of these vines into different buckets and it sticks with you. Grape for example just kinda hangs around in the air with thick woody rope-like vines. Virginia creeper looks pretty similar to poison ivy, but really desperately hangs on to the trunk of trees. Poison ivy hangs on to the tree too buy tries to branch dramatically towards light often with parabolic woody branches. Mature Virginia creeper is hairy like poison ivy but the hairs are lighter, thicker and shorter than poison ivy. Your brain categorizes all these differences even if it doesn't know the name.