It’s huge, it’s bright yellow, and it smells bad.
Western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) is an unmistakable plant that many northwesterners are probably familiar with.
The leaves of Skunk Cabbage are the biggest of any plant in our region. They can be 1.5 to almost 5 feet in length (0.5 to 1.5 m)! Native Americans used the leaves like wax paper to wrap up salmon and to line baskets for berry gathering. The leaves were eaten only in lean times when other food was scarce.
The individual flowers of Skunk Cabbage are actually small. They are the little nibs arranged in circles on the central spike, which looks vaguely like a pineapple. This structure is called a spadix and is a distinguishing feature of plants in the family Araceae (another familiar plant in this family is the Peace Lily). Forming a bright yellow hood around the spadix of a Skunk Cabbage is the spathe.
Skunk Cabbage grows where the soil is wet– near streams and in boggy places. It is one of the earliest blooming plants in the Pacific Northwest.
Amazing fact: chemical reactions in the cells of Skunk Cabbage’s flowers produce heat, which helps the plant melt through ice and snow as it grows in spring.
The flowers do give off a skunky smell, although it isn’t very powerful. The smell attracts insect pollinators. Chief among these pollinators is the beetle Pelecomalius testaceum, which apparently specializes on Skunk Cabbage.
Skunk Cabbage is also known as Swamp Lantern, which I think is a pretty awesome name.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m curious about the reference to Pelecomalius testaceum – it has very few results when I search on Google, and none with photos. One of the most common insects I see on Skunk Cabbage here in Southeast Alaska has been identified as Eusphalerum pothos (link goes to a picture of mine on bugguide.net. These beetles also visit flowers of many other species as well.
Thanks for the comment, Matt!
True, references to this beetle are rare. There is a scientific paper in the Canadian Journal of Botany by Mary Willson and Paul Hennon from 1997 titled The natural history of western skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanum) in southeast Alaska. I have only seen the abstract, which says, “… [Skunk cabbage] is pollinated chiefly by a small staphylinid beetle (Pelecomalius testaceum), which was found most abundantly on male-phase inflorescences in southeast Alaska. Yellow spathes attracted more beetles than green ones, especially on male inflorescences.”
So, these beetles are at least in your neck of the woods, up in Alaska. I wonder if they are also down here in Washington and Oregon.
Thanks for the reference! I have met both the authors, and coincidentally, Paul Hennon will be in Sitka tomorrow to give a talk on, so perhaps I will ask him about it. Since the study was done in Southeast Alaska, I suspect it’s the same beetle, so it would be interesting to see how/where they got the id.
Wow, what a crazy coincidence! I would love to hear what you learn from Paul.
I love skunk cabbage. Not the smell, but for its standout, almost tropical flora-like appearance in our Northwest forests and because it’s a plant I learned to recognize when I was a wee girl. There’s one skunk cabbage that unfurls every spring alongside the trail in the park where I walk frequently near my north Seattle home. Spring! I hope it didn’t start sprouting too early though this year before the big freeze.
thanks again for your informative and educational posts.
Glad you are getting something out of my posts, Jill. Thanks. Skunk cabbage really is impressive and does seem like an oddball plant when compared with the rest of our northwest flora. I hope your particular plant managed to endure the icy weather.