Mid-February, time for skunk cabbages
Feb. 16th, 2020 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIt's mid-February, and here in the mid-Atlantic that means skunk cabbage is out and about doing its weird green-purple thing. Generally by Valentine's Day you can get pretty decent pix of the skunk cabbage in my neck of the woods.
What the hell is skunk cabbage? It's a plant, Symplocarpus foetidus, that grows in very soggy ground in the mid-Atlantic US. (Range is pretty extensive according to iNaturalist.) You only find it in VERY SOGGY ground, so if you don't have a wetland kind of thing handy you are likely not going to see skunk cabbages. I have a wetland pretty handy so I see skunk cabbages easily.
Skunk cabbage has a flowering thing with a hood called a spathe, whole assembly about 5" tall and maroon, green, or green+maroon. (They're variable in color.) The flowering thing comes out way before the leaves and hangs around for a long time. It's there all by itself in the woods in freaking February. It's not THE only interesting thing going on in the woods this time of year, but it's one of not-very-many interesting things. And it's a perennial which makes it an easy-to-find thing. You find 'em once, you will find 'em in the same spot every year thereafter as long as the area stays undisturbed.
Why is skunk cabbage interesting? It's interesting because it is literally THE earliest wildflower-type event in our "spring". Skunk cabbage is before (invasive) coltsfoot. It's before fiddlehead ferns. It's before ramps, which we do not have but are reasonably local-ish. Skunk cabbage is first because it freaking blooms in mid-February most years. Absolutely nothing else blooms in February because February is STILL FUCKING WINTER.
Isn't shit frozen solid in February? Yes, a lot of years it is. Some years we have a bit of a thaw, but other years we are frozen solid for all of February. Either way, February here is winter. How can a plant bloom in the frozen?!? Well, skunk cabbage MAKES ITS OWN HEAT. I'm just going to quote wholesale from wikipedia b/c this is not only well-written, it is THE MOST well-written. "Eastern skunk cabbage is notable for its ability to generate temperatures of up to 15–35 °C (27–63 °F) above air temperature by cyanide resistant cellular respiration in order to melt its way through frozen ground, placing it among a small group of thermogenic plants."
If that's too science-y for you, know ye this: skunk cabbage is so fucking hardcore that it melts its way to the surface in order to bloom this early. The ground is frozen? Skunk cabbage says FUCK THAT I AM BLOOMING ANYWAY and it MELTS THE FROZEN GROUND with its... plant-body heat. That's pretty awesome.
They are also, in their plant way, kind of cool-looking. They're cool-looking when they're blooming and also when they are full grown plants. (They get rather impressive by midsummer.) Here are some pictures...
They do not HAVE to be in pairs. These pictures just happened to be pairs. They are not all like that.
When they leaf out, they have very striking, bright green leaves. These show up really well in early spring.
I have more pictures of this but do not have-them-have-them. I need some kind of sorting mechanism for the eighty gazillion pictures I take. I am a failure at sorting pictures. I should have folders for the things I take pictures of, like HORSES (a folder for each horse, if possible, so that I don't have to incidentally look at pictures of DBH which depress me) or ODES or Plants or whatever. Since pictures contain metadata of when taken and since I let the camera name stuff... I should sort. And, for that matter cull. There should be some photograph culling. I probably don't need fourteen slightly-different pictures of a particularly interesting example of ice needles.
What are ice needles? Glad you asked! (If you didn't ask I am going to pretend that you did because that's more fun for me.)
Ice needles are when the ground freezes after a warmish spell and liquid water in the ground comes out of the ground as kind of frozen ribbons. You'll see this more easily in wet areas (picture is of a creek bank) because there's enough water to make the needles. It is another of the Things You Can See In February, at least if the weather cooperates.
You can, if you are observant of small things, see Pink Earth Lichen (shown actual color, dime for scale) in February.
You can see the evergreen-ness of Goodyera pubescens, Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, an evergreen terrestrial orchid:
But basically February isn't a time of a gazillion interesting things. There isn't much to see or do just yet because it's still winter here. But, of what IS going on out there, a badass maroon-n-green flowering swamp perennial that MELTS ITS WAY OUT OF THE FROZEN GROUND to be the first wildflower of the year is kind of nifty. Also spring will be tagging along soon enough, about a month behind the skunk cabbage.
What the hell is skunk cabbage? It's a plant, Symplocarpus foetidus, that grows in very soggy ground in the mid-Atlantic US. (Range is pretty extensive according to iNaturalist.) You only find it in VERY SOGGY ground, so if you don't have a wetland kind of thing handy you are likely not going to see skunk cabbages. I have a wetland pretty handy so I see skunk cabbages easily.
Skunk cabbage has a flowering thing with a hood called a spathe, whole assembly about 5" tall and maroon, green, or green+maroon. (They're variable in color.) The flowering thing comes out way before the leaves and hangs around for a long time. It's there all by itself in the woods in freaking February. It's not THE only interesting thing going on in the woods this time of year, but it's one of not-very-many interesting things. And it's a perennial which makes it an easy-to-find thing. You find 'em once, you will find 'em in the same spot every year thereafter as long as the area stays undisturbed.
Why is skunk cabbage interesting? It's interesting because it is literally THE earliest wildflower-type event in our "spring". Skunk cabbage is before (invasive) coltsfoot. It's before fiddlehead ferns. It's before ramps, which we do not have but are reasonably local-ish. Skunk cabbage is first because it freaking blooms in mid-February most years. Absolutely nothing else blooms in February because February is STILL FUCKING WINTER.
Isn't shit frozen solid in February? Yes, a lot of years it is. Some years we have a bit of a thaw, but other years we are frozen solid for all of February. Either way, February here is winter. How can a plant bloom in the frozen?!? Well, skunk cabbage MAKES ITS OWN HEAT. I'm just going to quote wholesale from wikipedia b/c this is not only well-written, it is THE MOST well-written. "Eastern skunk cabbage is notable for its ability to generate temperatures of up to 15–35 °C (27–63 °F) above air temperature by cyanide resistant cellular respiration in order to melt its way through frozen ground, placing it among a small group of thermogenic plants."
If that's too science-y for you, know ye this: skunk cabbage is so fucking hardcore that it melts its way to the surface in order to bloom this early. The ground is frozen? Skunk cabbage says FUCK THAT I AM BLOOMING ANYWAY and it MELTS THE FROZEN GROUND with its... plant-body heat. That's pretty awesome.
They are also, in their plant way, kind of cool-looking. They're cool-looking when they're blooming and also when they are full grown plants. (They get rather impressive by midsummer.) Here are some pictures...
They do not HAVE to be in pairs. These pictures just happened to be pairs. They are not all like that.
When they leaf out, they have very striking, bright green leaves. These show up really well in early spring.
I have more pictures of this but do not have-them-have-them. I need some kind of sorting mechanism for the eighty gazillion pictures I take. I am a failure at sorting pictures. I should have folders for the things I take pictures of, like HORSES (a folder for each horse, if possible, so that I don't have to incidentally look at pictures of DBH which depress me) or ODES or Plants or whatever. Since pictures contain metadata of when taken and since I let the camera name stuff... I should sort. And, for that matter cull. There should be some photograph culling. I probably don't need fourteen slightly-different pictures of a particularly interesting example of ice needles.
What are ice needles? Glad you asked! (If you didn't ask I am going to pretend that you did because that's more fun for me.)
Ice needles are when the ground freezes after a warmish spell and liquid water in the ground comes out of the ground as kind of frozen ribbons. You'll see this more easily in wet areas (picture is of a creek bank) because there's enough water to make the needles. It is another of the Things You Can See In February, at least if the weather cooperates.
You can, if you are observant of small things, see Pink Earth Lichen (shown actual color, dime for scale) in February.
You can see the evergreen-ness of Goodyera pubescens, Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, an evergreen terrestrial orchid:
But basically February isn't a time of a gazillion interesting things. There isn't much to see or do just yet because it's still winter here. But, of what IS going on out there, a badass maroon-n-green flowering swamp perennial that MELTS ITS WAY OUT OF THE FROZEN GROUND to be the first wildflower of the year is kind of nifty. Also spring will be tagging along soon enough, about a month behind the skunk cabbage.
