Swamp Lanterns

Skunk Cabbage is here and that means that SPRING is really arrived! My Mother calls them Swamp Lanterns. Over the course of Spring the leaves get huge. In earlier times the large leaves were used to wrap meat for cooking---but don't touch the flower.

Western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus), sometimes called yellow skunk cabbage, is a plant found in swamps and wet woods, along streams and in other wet areas of the Pacific Northwest, where it is one of the few native species in the arum family, together with the duckweeds. The plant grows from rhizomes. The leaves are the largest of any native plant in the region. Its flowers are produced in a spadix contained within a large, bright yellow or yellowish green spathe. It is among the first flowers to appear in spring. The skunk cabbage also produces heat. During the Winter the heat it produces melts the snow around it so that it is able to survive. Although similarly named, the plant is easy to distinguish from the Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), another species in the arum family found in eastern North America.

The plant is called Skunk Cabbage because of the malodorous, distinctive "skunky" odor that it emits. This odor will permeate the area where the plant grows, and can be detected even in old, dried specimens. The foul odor attracts its pollinators, scavenging flies and beetles. Other common names include Yellow Skunk Cabbage and Swamp Lantern.