I love the smell of skunk in early spring. That sulfur smell tells me that the snow is melting, the sun is rising higher into the sky, and soon a carpet of wildflowers will paint the forest floor in white, purple and pink.
But it’s not the stink of an unfortunate nocturnal road-crosser. It’s a flower. In fact, it is the earliest flower to bloom in the first days of spring – if not the last weeks of winter.
I’m a professor of plant biology. Every spring I take my students on a walk through the woods. While they’re off taking pictures of buttercups and lilies, I’m ankle deep in mud, looking for my favorite spring wildflower: eastern skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus. Its species name, “fetid flower,” is an understatement.
zaigee/CC BY-SA 2.0
