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People who go looking for beauty in the woodlands of central
Illinois tend to get excited about the months of April and May, when showy
beauties like Virginia bluebells carpet the woodland floor. But if you wait
until April to get out, you may already be a month late for the emergence of the
first flower of spring.
I have to admit that the petal-less flower of the plant in
question, known by the scientific name Symplocarpus
foetidus, is not attractive in conventional terms. It’s a small, spongy,
egg-shaped affair that grows up hidden within a specialized leaf that forms a cowl
around it, in botanical terms, a “spathe.”
Unlike the flower it contains, however, this spathe is a
work of art. Bulbous at the base, which you could encircle with your thumb and
index finger, it extends upward in a twisting, tapering spiral three to six
inches tall. In color, this spathe may be as nondescript as the winter ground
from which it grows, dull brown or gray. But it may also be quite dramatic. The
most beautiful among them are wine-red, marked with lighter shades the color of
brick and speckles of pink.
Aside from the beauty of its spathe, Symplocarpus foetidus distinguishes itself from all other plants
native to Illinois by the fact that it generates heat--enough so that its
flower can remain 36 degrees warmer than the surrounding air for a period of
about two weeks. This capacity allows it to grow in frozen soil, and also
provides an inducement for early emerging insects, by which it is pollinated,
to hang around.
[Photo, above, by author. Thermal image, below, created by Paul Nabity, formerly of U of I Institute for Genomic Biology, currently professor in the Department of Entomology, Washington State University. Visit his lab at http://www.nabitylab.org.]
I’ve been coy about calling Symplocarpus foetidus by its common name because that name draws
attention to aspects of its personality that people may find unappealing.
That’s “skunk cabbage,” and this is definitely a plant that lives down to its
name.
As the flower of skunk cabbage matures, it gives off a distinct,
skunk-like odor, an odor that can also be produced by crushing any part of the
plant. It’s unattractive to people, but a real turn-on for carrion-eating
insects, and, hey, a plant needs to please its pollinators.
Something cool about skunk cabbage that you can’t know by observing
its aboveground components is that it grows deeper into the earth every year,
pulled downward by a massive root system that alternately extends and then gradually
contracts. On account of that, it is said to be impossible to dig an old one
out of the ground.
Skunk cabbage flourishes in woodland habitats where the soil
remains mucky throughout the year, which are few locally. The most accessible
places to seek it are at seeps in the Middle Fork State Fish and Wildlife Area,
north of Kickapoo State Park, and in the Vermilion County Conservation
District’s Forest Glen Preserve.
If you are not inclined to seek out skunk cabbage in the
next few weeks, you might look for it later in the season as its giant
leaves—some more than two feet long—unfurl. But don’t wait too long. As summer
begins to wear, they die back in their own unpleasant way, dissolving into a
smelly black slime rather than drying out.
