The Skunk Cabbage

Common name: skunk cabbage, eastern skunk cabbage

skunk cabbage in early spring, North Kingstown, Rhode Island

Scientific name: Symplocarpus foetidus

Habitat: forested wetlands, swamp

Forest layer: emergent plant, typically 6-24 inches high

Field marks: 

in spring: dark pink to brown hood-like flower, rotten odor

in summer: large fleshy green leaves growing in a spiral cluster

in fall: N/A (plant disintegrates)

in winter: N/A (dormant, only living parts underground in rhizome)

Plant family: Arum (Araceae); close relatives include Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), wild calla (Calla pallustris)

Native to: temperate North America

New England springs are known first to the skunk cabbage. A dark pink hood, fleshy and mottled, rises out of the ground even when frost and snow still cover the surface. Belonging to a group of plants called "thermogenic" or heat-producing plants, the skunk cabbage converts energy stored underground in the root system, called a rhizome, and releases its valuable, hidden warmth.

The skunk cabbage also releases a potent smell, akin to its namesake, a rotten odor like overboiled cabbage or a far-off skunk spray. The scent is delectable to flies, who come for the heat and to pollinate the yellow flowers inside that dark pink spathe. Walking in the swamp, you may smell the skunk cabbage before you see it. The skunk cabbage, so early to emerge each year, predates the flies it so dearly needs and feeds, but it will wait. The flies will come.

The leaves spiral open from the bud while the flower wilts. Thick, wide, bright green leaves. Once you know the skunk cabbage in summer, it will become a reliable host, welcoming you to places cooled by mucky soils, abuzz with dragonflies. See a skunk cabbage, and you are most certainly in a wetland. It cannot grow where the land is not wet. In wetland biology, we term this an "obligate" plant, because it consistently (99% of the time) lives only in wetland habitat.

Leaf litter critters at home in the shuffling top layer of the forest floor such as millipedes, slugs, and isopods eat the old leaves. Wood duck, turkey and black bear are said to eat its seeds come autumn. Though some people use the skunk cabbage in medicines or meals, I don't recommend you eat it because of a strong natural toxicity in its leaves.

Please go meet the skunk cabbage. Get to know this strange swamp-dweller. And please, when you do, tell me what you learn.

skunk cabbage in early spring, North Kingstown, Rhode Island

Helpful resources:

The Nature Institute: Skunk Cabbage

Urban Ecology Center: Eastern Skunk Cabbage

Fairfax County Public Schools: Skunk Cabbage