 |
The End of Winter, According to Skunk Cabbage
By late February or March, when the snow starts to disappear, I start feeling that familiar tug called spring fever. The woods still look locked in place, but the air is losing that metallic edge and becoming more damp. I know we’re going to get more snow, but something in me is rebelling against winter, as in enough is enough. That’s usually when I head out to look for skunk cabbage.
I don’t think of it as a spring ritual. It’s an end‑of‑winter ritual, a small act of faith that something is changing beneath the frozen surface. I go when the ground still crunches underfoot, when it feels a little premature, even when there’s still some snow in the woods. And yet, more often than not, I find them—those mottled purple spathes pushing up through cold soil, declaring that winter has overstayed its welcome. Sometimes they’re tucked into seeps where groundwater keeps things just warm enough. Sometimes they’re surrounded by snow, the white pulled back in a perfect ring around each plant. That’s a giveaway: skunk cabbage makes its own heat. While everything else is locked down, it’s warming the air inside its hooded shell, melting the snow at its feet, refusing to wait for spring weather.
The leaves won’t appear for weeks. When they do, they’ll be enormous—bright green, deeply veined, rising from the plant’s base like something tropical misplaced in a Wisconsin wetland. But in March, all I get is the spathe, three to six inches tall and mottled. The emergence of skunk cabbage is the hinge between seasons, the moment when winter loosens just enough for something to start growing.
By the time many spring ephemeral wildflowers are in bloom, skunk cabbage will already be well on its way—leaves unfurling, roots anchored deep in the muck. But I’ll remember that March (sometimes even February) morning when I found the first one, half‑hidden in snow, doing the improbable work of ending winter from the inside out.
Sources:
Wisconsin Horticulture – Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)
Illinois Wildflowers – Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)
Minnesota Wildflowers – Symplocarpus foetidus (Skunk Cabbage)
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center – Symplocarpus foetidus
USDA Plants Database – Symplocarpus foetidus Profile
Missouri Botanical Garden – Symplocarpus foetidus
(EW)