Skunk Cabbage in January!

I walked down to the swampy areas on the other side of Mt Pleasant Farm when I was there earlier this week (away from either Construction Zone) and looked at a couple of places I knew Skunk Cabbage grows. The first – closer – place was still like winter – no sunk cabbage coming up in the muck. But the second place had lots of new shoots of the plant coming up!

Once I saw the a few plants – I started seeing even more of them. We’ve been having a warmer than usual January so the plants may be coming up a bit earlier than usual. They are some of the earliest flowers of spring. The early insects (including bees) are attracted to their not-pleasant-to-us smell. They often show up when snow is still on the ground but this year it hasn’t been necessary so far.

One of the shoots has been cut (by a mower?) so the structure of the coiled up leave is obvious.  The structure coming up next to it might be a flower.

As I walked back along the small stream (East Branch), I spotted two green shoots in a relatively narrow and rocky part of the stream bed…probably a new stand of skunk cabbage from seeds produced in the large stand a little upstream.

It will be interesting to observe what happens to these plants if we do have some very cold weather. After all – it’s only January…still some winter left to go.