Wacky Winter Wildflower

Text and photos by Barbara J. Saffir

Care to eyeball one of the wackiest wildflowers on the planet? No need to blaze a trail to Borneo or Brazil. Exotic-looking native Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) thrives practically in our own backyards in Northern Virginia. 

Not only is Eastern skunk cabbage Virginia’s earliest blooming native wildflower, but it also generates and regulates its own heat, changes color, and even transforms its sex. And if that isn’t wacky enough, this oddball flower typically starts blooming in frigid January in Northern Virginia. No other Virginia native wildflower blooms in January.

The spathe’s colors can vary from solid and variegated cranberry to chartreuse. Inside the spathe is its “spadix,” a ball-like structure that somewhat resembles a coronavirus. As it transforms from a female (with little female stigmas poking out all over the spheroidal ball) into a male (sprouting yellow male anthers with yellow pollen), it also starts to change from cranberry/pink to butter-yellow.

Although the Virginia Native Plant Society says that Eastern skunk cabbage possesses “only modest beauty,” some fans feel that this curvaceous creation with jewel-tone colors and Georgia O’Keeffe forms is worthy of the Museum of Modern Art.

So, where do you find this pint-sized pulchritudinous plant? In the muck. As an obligate wetland plant, it thrives in the gooey black muck, with its contractile roots pulling it deep into the earth. By late spring, it has evolved into a tall, tropical-looking wave of lush green leaves. And by summer, the leaves of this perennial have all but disappeared as some of its roughly two-inch berry-like fruits have fallen into the muck to start the cycle of life anew. 

Eastern skunk cabbage in the snow is a memorable sight. Just ask one of the fourteen hardy ARMN members and their guests who trekked along a snowy trail in 24-degree, windy weather on Jan. 21, 2024, to learn about the wacky wildflower and the steamy heat it generates to attract pollinators. Some even got down on their hands and knees in the spongy snow to peer inside the small opening of its hood-like spathes with penlights to check out its teensy-weensy yellow flowers. They compared notes about whether the Eastern skunk cabbage actually smelled, even when one was accidentally smushed . . . and only then did it start smelling. Most said they couldn’t smell it despite skunk cabbage’s practically malicious moniker.

“Eastern skunk cabbage is just a fascinating plant,” said ARMN member Manoma Sirisena. “You can read about it, but it doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it in person.”

Serisena and her colleagues ventured along the Foxstone Park Trail in Vienna, VA for the continuing education hike that I led. I have been informally studying and photographing Eastern skunk cabbage for several years.  

And since they began this “Skunks, Spies, and Other Winter Wonders” trek by the site of one of America’s most shattering spy stories, they also learned about FBI agent-turned Russian spy Robert Hanssen, whom the FBI calls the most damaging spy in American history. Hanssen lived nearby and was busted making his final drop at the Foxstone Park pedestrian bridge. Hanssen will never return to Foxstone Park—but the wacky winter wildflowers will return every year.