Previous plants of the week - The spring adonis blossom
The skunk cabbage - Symplocarpus foetidus (L.) Salisb. ex W.P.C.Barton
"Eh' des Frühlings milde Luft
Neues Leben weckt,
Ruht in Knospen tief versteckt
Aller Blüten Duft."
It was not only Auguste Kurs who was lyrically inspired by spring scents in the mid-19th century. We also perceive the renewed awakening of nature with all our senses and associate it with fragrant flowers, such as violets and hyacinths.
But we should question the familiar. That's why we're introducing a completely different kind of early bloomer from the North American region: the skunk cabbage. It also pushes buds out of the ground, but they do not emit sweet spring scents. And for good reason: it is mainly beetles and dipterans, especially flies, that pollinate this arum plant. They are attracted by the pungent "scent" of the inflorescences close to the ground. This has a harsh and repulsive effect on our nose: descriptions from literature compare the scent with rotting meat, garlic, a mixture of mustard and onions or describe it as cabbage-like, disgusting, repulsive.
But it is not only olfactory cells that are affected by stinky cabbage. Insects awakened from hibernation early in the year have a keen sense for heat sources. The plant, which occasionally flowers in the melting snow, uses this as a further attraction signal for pollinators. By accelerating cellular respiration, the inflorescence heats up to 30 °C above the ambient temperature (thermogenesis). The warming prevents frost damage to the flowers, promotes the spread of scent and creates a shelter that insects like to visit in cool temperatures: A red-green speckled bract, the so-called spatha typical of arum plants, wraps around the short, bulb-shaped inflorescence with closely packed inconspicuous hermaphrodite flowers like a protective hood.
The skunk cabbage draws the energy for heating from its underground rootstock (rhizome). It serves as a nutrient store and enables the plant to sprout early in the year. Other spring-flowering plants, such as crocuses, daffodils and primroses, also rely on storage organs in the form of tubers, bulbs or rhizomes to be the first to bloom in spring.
The natural habitat of the skunk cabbage is swampy woodland areas in the north-east of America. The flowering of a native representative of the arum family should appear in May at the latest: The spotted arum(Arum maculatum L.) attracts butterfly mosquitoes to its likewise heated tesselated flowers. Only after successful pollination and a night in the warmth do they return outdoors.
(CW 15/25)
Around 10,000 plant species grow in the Botanical Garden at TU Dresden. On this page, we regularly present an example of this diversity in more detail. The special features of our scientific plant collection can be seen in many different ways: in amazing adaptations, strange names, interesting uses or even in the extraordinary splendor of their flowers.
You can view previous Plant of the Week articles in the archive.