By Charlie Frisk
Correspondent
The skunk cabbage is Wisconsin’s earliest flowering plant, the flower can be seen popping up out of wetlands as early as February, and the flower opens up in early March.
The skunk cabbage has many unusual traits that allow it to grow and flower while Wisconsin has not yet shaken off the effects of winter.
One of these is thermogenesis, the ability to produce heat, by which the plant can raise its temperature to 70 degrees.
The plant does this in cases of a March or April snowstorm that would bury the plants in snow, and prevent insects from assisting in their pollination.
I have walked in wetlands following a March snowstorm and seen a perfect circle melted through the snow around every skunk cabbage flower.
The plant produces heat by cellular respiration, something we usually associate only with mammals, and produces one of the most unusual sights in nature.
The flower has a tough, waxy coating to survive sub-freezing temperatures.
The spathe, a hood-like sheath, covers the flower, and the flower itself is a greenish, bumpy bulb, called the spadix.
The spathe and the leaves smell like skunk, thus the name skunk cabbage.
I had always read that the flower has a rotting flesh odor, but I could never detect that smell over the dominant skunk smell.
However, one time I rubbed the spadix to see what it felt like, and came away with the distinct odor of rotting flesh on my fingers.
The smell attracts scavenging flies, bees and gnats that assist in pollination.
This is another adaptation for flowering while Wisconsin is barely out of winter, too early for the moths and butterflies that are attracted to colorful flowers to be out.
The skunky odor prevents browsing by deer, rabbits and rodents, which would otherwise ravage it, because it is the only soft, fleshy plant available that early in the spring.
The flower decomposes about the time the leaves come out.
If you look where the flower was, you can find hard, pea-sized seeds.
The leaves are large, and do look like a young cabbage plant.
The plants are perennial, and send their roots deeper every year of their life; an older plant is almost impossible to dig up.
I cannot understand why anyone would want to eat a plant that smells like skunk, but there are people that ingest it for its supposed medical benefits.
According to the FDA, there is no evidence that skunk cabbage has any medicinal properties.
Ingesting skunk cabbage can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and in some cases can be fatal.
Steve Brill, an edible plant expert, had this to say about eating skunk cabbage, “Marginally edible at best, skunk cabbage contains calcium oxalate crystals, which cause the most unpleasant burning sensation of the mouth and tongue. Boiling does not dispel this quality.”
Skunk cabbage should be appreciated for their beauty and their unique role in nature, and not as a food or medicine.
Skunk cabbages are one of the toughest plants in nature, able to thrive and bloom while Wisconsin is still coming out of the grips of winter.
However, skunk cabbage can only survive in low, wet seepage areas.
If those areas are developed, or their water source is diverted, they will not survive.
Two great places to see skunk cabbage are in the Baird Creek Greenway in Green Bay.
One is at the bottom of the first hill when you hike in from Christa McAuliffe Park, located on Sitka Drive, and the other is in a low seepage area east of Superior Road and south of Baird Creek.
Other natural events to watch for in March:
• Sandhill cranes returning to Wisconsin.
• Maple sap beginning to flow, look for buckets and bags on maple trees.
• Woodcocks performing their sky dance in the evenings.