communing with nature by kayak

This is mostly for rwblackbird, but everyone should take a look.

365 Urban Species. #089: Skunk Cabbage

photo by cottonmanifesto

Urban species #089: Skunk cabbage Symplocarpus foetidus

Forgive us northerners for looking everywhere for signs of spring. In Boston, all winters are long, even mild ones like the one we have hopefully left behind us. As each migratory bird returns, and each new plant sprouts, we shall celebrate. Join us in celebrating skunk cabbage.

Early in spring, the hoodlike structure called a spathe sprouts from the mud of a swamp or streambed. In the spathe is a knob covered with tiny flowers. The flowering structure (if you need to know the name it's a spadix) gives off heat for a couple weeks, 36 degrees warmer than the outside air temperature. The flowers give off a fetid odor as well (note the scientific name) as heat. The heat and smell attract some of the first carrion-feeding insects to awaken in late winter. This is how the skunk cabbage spreads its pollen.

Later in the year the cabbage-like foliage unfurls, smelling faintly skunky, until you tear a piece and crush it, and then it smells strongly skunky. Despite their appearance the leaves are not food for humans or other mammals (they are poisonous), but they are palatable to millipedes, isopods, slugs, earthworms and other detritovores. In the fall, the weird knobby fruit is eaten by various animals, notably wood ducks; the seeds are spread in the animals' droppings.

You won't likely encounter skunk cabbage growing in a sidewalk crack or a vacant lot. To find this urban wildflower, you have to deliberately search for it--actually take the effort to find a swampy park in the city. We Bostonians are so eager for spring that we will gladly risk getting our feet wet in March to see, and smell, another sign of it.

( a week later )