If Eastern skunk cabbage\u2014Symplocarpus foetidus\u2014were a person, you would avoid him.\u00a0 Inactive for part of the year, skunk cabbage comes alive in late winter.\u00a0 It never looks terribly attractive and most of the time it smells awful enough to justify one of its nicknames, \u201cpolecat weed.\u201d\u00a0 People and even animals tend to avoid the plant all together.\u00a0 The only creatures that seem to love this member of the Arum or Araceae family are the flies and other early-rising insects that pollinate it.\u00a0 They, of course, are drawn by its absolutely fetid odor.\u00a0 There is no accounting for taste.<\/p>\n
You might know or grow some of skunk cabbage\u2019s more respectable relatives, which include the currently fashionable Jack-in-the-pulpit or Arisaema species.\u00a0 Some of the Jacks, like the common three-leafed variety, Arisaema triphyllum, grow wild in American woodland areas; others pop up in similar situations in Asia.\u00a0 Another socially prominent skunk cabbage relation is calla lily or Zantedeschia.\u00a0 I saw hundreds of them at this year\u2019s Philadelphia Flower Show in an array of colors.\u00a0 They are tender in my part of the world, but the catalogs encourage us to plant them in containers.\u00a0 I suspect that if the Araceae clan were to stage a family reunion, Eastern skunk cabbage and its equally smelly relative, Western skunk cabbage, or Lysichiton americanus, would be relegated to a separate table.<\/p>\n
All arums feature interesting flowers that are composed of two distinct parts.\u00a0 The spathe is the leaf-like sheath that encloses and protects the spadix, a fleshy spike that is covered with the plant\u2019s true flowers.\u00a0 The upright \u201cJack\u201d of Jack-in-the-pulpit fame is the spadix, holding forth from the confines of the \u201cpulpit,\u201d which is the spathe.\u00a0 In Eastern skunk cabbages, the spathe emerges reddish brown with green splotches, gradually revealing a cream-colored spadix inside.\u00a0 This appears well before the large, medium green, cabbage-like leaves.\u00a0 Skunk cabbages can grow quite large, up to 16 inches wide, and whenever one of those leaves is broken or crushed, the smell is quite pervasive.<\/p>\n
Most people would never grow skunk cabbage in the garden, unless of course, part of the landscape featured a marshy woodland area.\u00a0 Still the plants have a distinct character and are admirable in their own way.\u00a0 Skunk cabbages long ago developed an adaptation, known as thermogenesis, which allows the plants to generate the heat they need to thaw frozen ground, enabling shoots to emerge in spring.\u00a0 The result of a respiratory process, thermogenesis can create temperatures up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the surrounding environment.\u00a0 In addition to thawing the ground, the temperature-altering operation creates a warm zone around the plants and helps spread the characteristic fetid odor, both of which lure the carrion feeding insects necessary for pollination.\u00a0 Without skunk cabbage, some of the early-emerging pollinators would be hard pressed for food.\u00a0 Without the pollinators, the skunk cabbage would be hard pressed to perpetuate itself.\u00a0 Thermogenesis and symbiosis are wonderful things and help make skunk cabbage unique.<\/p>\n
Thermogenesis is not the only near-magic perpetrated by skunk cabbage.\u00a0 The leaves are mostly composed of water, so they fall over, dry and turn to dust very quickly.\u00a0 Perhaps more remarkable, the plants have the unusual ability to grow not just upwards, but downwards.\u00a0 After the seeds germinate, the roots reach down into the earth.\u00a0 As the roots grow, the roots also contract, pulling the stem downward.\u00a0 This process continues as the plant matures creating extremely deep-rooted plants that resist removal vigorously.<\/p>\n
So why should we, who pride ourselves on our ornamental and\/or edible landscapes, care about skunk cabbage?\u00a0 Though not conventionally beautiful, it is eye-catching in wet woodlands in the spring.\u00a0 Even more important, its continued presence is a symbol of environmental health, while its absence is symbolic of unhealthy ecosystem disturbance.\u00a0 Other species depend on its persistence.\u00a0\u00a0 Marsh-loving yellowthroat warblers sometimes nest in the big leaves and wood ducks and bobwhite quail eat the seeds.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we gardeners should abandon our clean-up efforts temporarily, don our gumboots and take a walk in the woods\u2014especially as it wakes up in the early spring.\u00a0 You may see and smell skunk cabbage, not to mention trilliums, Jacks\u2013in-the \u2013pulpit and other spring bloomers.\u00a0 If you are observant of shapes, colors and growth patterns, you may even find some ideas for your own garden.\u00a0 Skunk cabbages won\u2019t work, but various species of primrose, with their lettuce-like, basal leaf rosettes, provide a somewhat similar visual profile, plus lovely flowers with none of the nose-wrinkling smell.<\/p>\n
Sweet inspiration does not always need a sweet fragrance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If Eastern skunk cabbage\u2014Symplocarpus foetidus\u2014were a person, you would avoid him.\u00a0 Inactive for part of the year, skunk cabbage comes alive in late winter.\u00a0 It never looks terribly attractive and most of the time it smells awful enough to justify one of its nicknames, \u201cpolecat weed.\u201d\u00a0 People and even animals tend to avoid the plant … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[1143,1150,1142,1147,753,1146,1149,1144,713,1141,1145,1148],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-araceae","tag-arisaema","tag-arum-family","tag-calla-lily","tag-early-spring-plants","tag-foul-smelling-plants","tag-jack-in-the-pulpit","tag-lysichiton-americanus","tag-skunk-cabbage","tag-symplocarpus-foetidus","tag-wetland-plants","tag-zantedeschia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1302,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions\/1302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}