Reacted to poison ivy in unrestricted ditch around bottom of tree (6)
I believe the answer is:
itched
'reacted to poison ivy' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'in unrestricted ditch around bottom of tree' is the wordplay.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'unrestricted' means to look at the middle letters (remove the outside letters which restrict the rest).
'bottom' says to take the final letters.
'of tree' becomes 'he' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The middle of 'ditch' is 'itc'.
The final letter of 'around' is 'd'.
'itc'+'d'='itcd'
'itcd' enclosing 'he' is 'ITCHED'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for itched that I've seen before include "irritated!" , "Was impatient (to do something)" , "Felt a strong desire" , "had urges" , "Was in need of a scratch" .)