It’s spring in the woods, and botanical aliens are awakening. They aren’t really aliens — they’re native inhabitants of the Salish Sea region — but when they start emerging in early spring, they might make you imagine extraterrestrial creatures from a science fiction movie, hiding under the ground all winter, then poking green beaks up through mud and last year’s fallen leaves to test the spring air.

Bright yellow spikes start to unfold, revealing a nubby cylinder inside. Is it alien, plant, or plastic? If there’s a doubt about the organic nature of this being, the smell confirms it is indeed alive and doing something chemical. Particularly on a warm spring day, with a big patch of the yellow spikes on full display, that aroma wafting across a forest trail makes it easy to understand why people named them skunk cabbage.

smell of success

American skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) is more poetically known as swamp lantern. A true wetland plant, its roots must be saturated year-round. It’s ideal habitat is a pocket of deep, mucky soils in a low spot in the forest, or in a groundwater seep on a shady hillside. The roots often grow to a depth of a foot or more and form a large rootball. The leaves of skunk cabbage continue to grow through the summer and become quite large before dying back in the fall.

breakfast for bears

For black bears, early spring skunk cabbage is an important food source. After emerging from hibernation, black bears have been observed feasting on the roots and leaves (resulting in another nickname, bear weed).

However, skunk cabbage is toxic if consumed by humans, particularly in its raw form. It contains calcium oxalate crystals, which can cause irritation of the mouth, throat, and digestive tract, or even death if consumed in large quantities. Indigenous people have used skunk cabbage for medicinal purposes and in food preparation. The large leaves were used to line baskets and as wrappers for salmon and other foods cooked in a fire. Obviously these practices require knowledge of how to carefully process each part of the plant to avoid its toxic effects.

hot cabbage

Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) grows in wetlands of eastern North America. When damaged, the leaves of the eastern species emit a strong pungent odor (sound familiar?). It is a thermogenic species, having evolved special chemical processes inside the plant that allow it to heat up as it emerges from the ground in early spring, even melting through snow. Our Salish Sea species, Lysichiton americanus, is not known to be thermogenic, however.

invading across the sea

American skunk cabbage was introduced as a garden plant in Europe in the early 1900s. As with too many introduced garden species, it escaped into natural landscapes where it thrives in forested wetlands. Its large leaves shade out and block native plants from growing. Laws to prevent importing or spreading this species are in place in European countries, and volunteers are working to remove it. Anyone who has spent time digging out invasive English ivy or Himalayan blackberry from a forest in the Salish Sea region can understand the hard work required to control an alien plant once it’s loosed on a native ecosystem.

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