The Urban Pantheist

This is my favorite picture from today's Urban Nature Walk in Forest Park, a huge city park in the third largest city in Massachusetts, Springfield. I grew up two towns away from here, but had never explored it quite like this. Here's my favorite picture from the walk, from about halfway through. But let's see how we got there!

( lots and lots of photos )

A great walk! If you'd like to get in on the action go here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/68443835849/

Boston has a category of public land called "Urban Wilds." By expanding the range of landscape experiences beyond that of the dense built environment and manicured Boston parkland, urban wilds form an essential part of the city's open space system. The only one of these that I am aware we have been to is Belle Isle Marsh. Yesterday we went to Allandale Woods. We've passed it dozens of times, and one day Alex wondered aloud "what are those woods?" I found them on the map and found the somewhat concealed parking area.
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Alex, Alexis, the dogs and I went to Callahan State Park in Framingham today. Here Charlie and I are admiring the big white pines.

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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 )