Column by Marty Giles

Our group was walking along the Hidden Creek Trail boardwalk at South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, admiring the lush grove of Western skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) densely carpeting the freshwater wetland.

Big, dazzling yellow “flowers” were tucked among the leaves, punctuating the field of green. The eye-catching stubby-canoe shapes (“spathes”) are actually modified leaves that are not directly part of the flowers. (The plant’s genus name is derived from the Greek lysis, for loosening, and chiton, the one-piece tunic worn by ancient Greeks: The spathe can resemble a loosely-opened shirt.)

The real skunk cabbage flowers are embedded in the fleshy spadix, the club-shaped structure nestled in the yellow spathe. The spathe’s scent draws tiny beetles that come to feed on the plant’s pollen and use the spadix as their mating ground. As they feed and mill around, the beetles pollinate the skunk cabbage’s tiny, four-parted flowers.

In summer, after the yellow spathe has wilted and fallen away, the flowers will mature into pulpy greenish to reddish berries packed tightly around the mature spadix — rather like kernels on an ear of corn.

Sometimes the flower assembly emerges first and sometimes the leaves emerge first. Skunk cabbage leaves are unmistakable, too: glossy green – sometimes mottled with darker green — with prominent fleshy veins, and up to 5 feet tall and a foot-and-a-half wide.

As along the boardwalk, skunk cabbage grows in places that are wet all or most of the year, and they seem to do best in light or seasonal shade — such as the shade cast by red alder. Heat-producing chemical reactions in the plant help it through late winter ice on the wetland, as well as encourage pollinating beetles.

“Are these plants edible?” someone asked.

Many PNW tribes collected various parts of skunk cabbage for a variety of medicinal uses. The huge leaves have been extensively used to wrap or hold food or to line baskets or cooking vessels. Young leaves are said to have been eaten.

Skunk cabbage has a fleshy root that would seem edible, but has been used by people only as a famine food because of sharp calcium oxalate crystals that can pierce the tongue and throat and cause swelling and choking. (Most other members of the Arum Family, such as calla lily, jack-in-the-pulpit, and dumb cane, have the same effect for the same reason.) Skunk cabbage roots can be eaten if the crystals are broken up or denatured by drying and pounding the root into flour or by changing the water several times during boiling.

Slugs, deer, elk, and bear do eat skunk cabbage, however, and bite-marks from elk and other diners often show up on the leaves.

There is an Eastern skunk cabbage. Symplocarpus foetidus has smaller, rounder spathes of mottled burgundy/green, and has smaller leaves, than the Western.

Skunk cabbage’s bright yellow spathes and huge, lustrous leaves make them popular in water-side gardens Europe. Our cabbage is popular enough in Great Britain that the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has given Western skunk cabbage its Award of Garden Merit and named Western skunk cabbage as its “Plant of the Month” for April.

According to the RHS, skunk cabbage was first introduced to British gardens in 1901. Western skunk cabbage is quite hardy and, though slow-growing, fairly prolific, and has escaped from European gardens. Our wetland gem is now considered an invasive weed in Great Britain, Germany, and other places in Europe.

For information on how to arrange an exploration of our fascinating natural history for your group or your visiting guests, contact Marty at 267-4027, or e-mail mgiles@wavecrestdiscoveries.com. Questions and comments about local natural history are welcome.