Posted March 22, 2020
The purple spathes of skunk cabbage plants (Symplocarpus foetidus) have been emerging all week. The image here, taken yesterday, is of a cluster in our bog that we’ve been monitoring and cataloging photographically for several years.
Skunk cabbages are the first wild plants to flower during our spring. However, they flower inside the spathe from a fleshy geodesic-dome-like bulb called a spadix. Sometimes, the spadix becomes visible due to the spathe being trampled or bitten::
04/14/20 Image Inserted Later
These flowers produce a gagging odor that smells like rotting meat to us, but they apparently smell delicious to pollinating insects.
The large, beautiful skunk cabbage leaves usually start to come in May here. You should be careful not to barge through them, unless you like being confronted with an odor similar to skunk spray. By mid-summer, the plants are in regal form. Here’s a July 1, 2019, image of the above spathe cluster:
(Brooklin, Maine)