Related to the Jack-in-the-pulpit, skunk cabbage emerges as a mottled maroon or brown hood called a spathe. Inside an opening in the spathe is a club-like head of tiny flowers known as a spadix. Huge rhubarb-like leaves up to two feet long come out after the spathe emerges and last until September. For the last several years, I only saw skunk cabbage leaves and missed seeing the plant in bloom.
Skunk cabbage is one of the first wildflowers to appear every year because it can heat its environment. For about two weeks, the plant has the ability to warm the air near it up to 36 degrees higher than the ambient air temperature. Growing in wet woodlands and marshes, skunk cabbage can melt ice and snow around it.
The heat emitted by these skunk cabbage plants has helped to melt the ice and allow them to emerge.
The "skunk" in its common name and the Latin root word for fetid in its scientific name (Symplocarpus foetidus) suggest that the plant stinks. Skunk cabbage reportedly has a bad odor when crushed, but my nose has never gotten close enough to a flower to smell anything bad. The odor attracts flies, bees and gnats to enter the spathe and pollinate the flowers on the spadix.
Having helped to melt a patch of snow, skunk cabbage plants bloom back-to-back.
The spathe of a skunk cabbage plant ready to emerge in the space the plant has opened in the snow.
I left Petrifying Springs Park with a large splotch of mud on my jeans and very muddy boots that took me a half hour to clean. But finding so many skunk cabbage plants in bloom, especially after the dearth of the last few years. made it worth it.
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Comments: 13
we need some skunk cabbage around here it's still cold!
Arlene,
Tacoma florist
There are other places besides Petrifying Springs in the Chicago area that have skunk cabbage, but not as reliably. I don't know of any places near you that have skunk cabbage, but that doesn't mean there aren't any--it's just that I haven't been to those places at the right time of year to look. SC needs humus-rich wet woodlands and marshes to grow. I see the leaves every year in the Botanic Garden woodlands, but so far no flowers. Because of the heavy snow we've had this winter, I haven't walked in the BG woodland so far this year to check. Morton Arboretum has some SC--I've seen the flower there. Reed-Turner woodland in Long Grove supposedly has some, but all I've seen there were leaves.
Petrifying Springs reliably has SC, and the hikes are geared to visit diverse places at the season when they have something our class would be interested in. And just about everyone wants to see skunk cabbage. By the way, Petrifying Springs isn't that far from where you live.
From there, several trails split off, one to the summit of Mt. San Jacinto, at 10,834 feet, another, through Long Valley to the top of the tramway, where hikers can descend from the alpine coolness to the heat of the low desert in Palm Springs. The ride is spectacular, with views over the city of Palm Springs, across the desert to mountain ranges in the east, and south to the Salton Sea and even to Mexico beyond it. The temperature change from top to bottom of the tramway is frequently more than 50 degrees F.
What an absolutely amazing plant, to be able to generate such heat as to melt snow and ice! Of course, I have heard of this plant, but never really knew anything about it. It's just one of those names that you hear and sticks with you over the years. Great article and photos!
I look foward to reading about your trip to the Lincoln Library. A friend went and really enjoyed it.