Anatomy of a Skunk Cabbage

One of our first and weirdest wildflowers to emerge in springtime is the eery purple hooded bog dweller, Skunk Cabbage—Symplocarpus foetidus, in the Arum family: Araceae. These dark, ground growing blooms rise out early in damp places along creek beds, around ponds, in low wooded areas where water sits and in wetlands. They are truly one of our first herbaceous plants to return, sometimes even melting through the last layer of snow. Many view them as the true harbinger of spring here in the northeast. Skunk cabbages have a unique ability to generate heat, a rare feat in a plant, which allows it to get ahead of the rest of the spring wildflowers and be the first to bloom. And also how you’ll see it emerging through late-lasting ice and snow!

Botanically skunk cabbages are pretty unique, distinguished by their “spathe” and “spadix” structure, much like the plant’s close relative Jack-in-the-Pulpit, another regional Arum plant. These are the most conspicuous features of the plant, which don’t make it look a whole lot like a flower to most of us.

The spathe is a specialized bract—a type of leaf associated with flowers—that forms the thick smooth shiny hood-like fold we know so well. It grows in a range of colors from vibrant yellowish-green to mottled magenta to rich royal purple. The patterning on the spathe is incredibly beautiful and I really enjoy hunting down and taking photos of really beautiful ones I discover.

The spadix sits inside the spathe, a round bundle of many small flowers (an inflorescence) all joined together on a common receptacle. It looks like a fleshy pink ball, with many little segments. There are about 50-100 little flowers that make up the spadix—those are the segments. These flowers are bisexual, meaning they have both male—pollen-producing—and female—seed-producing—parts. The single pistil (female) emerges first from each flower, like a tiny stem, and then the stamen, which produce the bright yellow dusty pollen that sometimes gathers in the base of the spathe. The flowers don’t look explicitly like flowers with the typical ring of petals, and actually collectively look a bit like a microscopic virus than a blossom, but don’t be fooled—they are flowers and to many insects they are very attractive!

The smell of Skunk Cabbage is very distinct and part of how it gets both its common and botanical name. When crushed or broken the plant has a skunky, rotten smell to it and this, plus their warmth-producing quality, makes it a perfect place for pollinators to find solace and food in the brisk days of early spring. The species name, “foetidus,” refers to this smell as well—the “fetid” rotting animal smell that so distinguishes an early spring walk through the wetland, crushing a few leaf-hidden skunk cabbages underfoot along the way. The genus name, “Symplocarpus” basically means many fruits, which is what forms after the flowers have been pollinated—a many fruited bundle, much like that of Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

The leaves of skunk cabbage unfold after the flower, starting out as a little conical protuberance, then opening up like an umbrella into huge tropical-looking bright green leaves, more round than long. The leaves have some of that skunky smell to them too and really fill out the wetlands where they grow. Though the flowers disappear after spring, the leaves stick around through the summer, seemingly getting larger and larger!

The above images depict as best as possible all these funny little facets of this totally strange and alluring plant—one of my personal favourites and the true harbinger of spring around these parts. There is a different skunk cabbage out west, the western skunk cabbage, sometimes called the swamp lantern (a name I absolutely love!), but it is a bit different and actually in a totally different genus, yet still the Arum plant family. Calla lilies are another well-known spadix-spathe flower, along with Jack-in-the-pulpit, Dutchman’s pipe, and Calamus.

Now (March-early May) is certainly the time to go out and admire these wonky freak flowers, a treasured pastime after winter’s lack of exciting plant-life. See how many variations in colour you can find!

Identifying Plants in Winter

Typically, in northern climates, we don’t think of winter as this incredible time to do botany or engage with plants, or even interact much with nature on the whole. Most of the plants are dormant, maybe even buried in inches of snow, the landscape can be pretty bleak. Every once in a while there’s a glorious pop of green moss or the discovery of a beautifully striated mushroom heartily hanging on. Otherwise, it’s hard to find much to look at. But! I am here to tell you that it can be done, plant identification can happen in winter and, though difficult, can be really very fun to push yourself to explore and can shift the way you engage with the land during this slower, quieter season. So, I want to give you a few good tips and tricks for getting out there and giving it a whirl! Many of these principles are useful no matter the time of year, so it’s nice to get familiar with using them. This guide will not enable you to walk out and identify perfectly whatever you find, but it will give you a baseline for what to look for and how, so that you can use those sometimes very confusing botany guides more easily. 

WOODY PLANTS

Let’s start with woody plants. Woody plants are trees, bushes and shrubs, and vines. Caning plants like blackberry and raspberry would also fall into the woody plant category. These are plants that you will most likely be able to find really easily and visibly during winter. Still mostly dormant, these plants don’t fully die back in the fall, rather they mostly just lose their leaves and direct all their life energy downward to their roots. Soon here they’ll be reawakening, getting their inner juices flowing up and down through their very structured circulatory pathway system below the outer bark, all of which will eventually reinvigorate the green growth. For now, however, here are a few things to examine to help identify them in their current winter state. 

I always tell people to start out with the 3 B’s of winter tree ID: branches, bark, and buds. 

Branches

Branching pattern is an important plant indicator, no matter the season, but especially in winter. There are 3 types of branching patterns: 

Opposite—the branches grow off the trunk opposite one another, the twigs grow off the branch opposite one another, and the leaves (or in winter, the buds) grow off the twig opposite one another. This gives the plant a more structured appearance!

Alternate—the branches, twigs, and leaves don’t grow oppositely, they alternate how they grow off the plant, giving a more random appearance.

Whorled—this is the more rare of the three, but indicates a plant where the branches/twigs/leaves grow in a radiating formation, spinning around the plant like a twirling skirt with all of their origins coming from the same linear place. This often gives plants a cylindrical or conical shape rather than a branching and spreading appearance. A great example of a well-known whirled woody plant is the pine tree!

The most common of the three branching patterns is alternate—most plants have alternating plant parts. In the world of woody plants there is a fun little acronym for remembering what plants have opposite branches and leaves: MAD CAP HORSE

M - Maples

A - Ashes

D - Dogwood

CAP - Caprifoliaceae: this is a plant family that includes all of the honeysuckles (vining and bush) and Viburnums in our region (technically, the Viburnums have been moved into a new family, the Adoxaceae, but they used to be in Caprifoliaceae and are included in this opposite branching classification)

HORSE - stands for horse chestnut and any of the buckeye trees or trees in the Hippocastanaceae family

And that’s it! Those are the only woody plants with opposite branching patterns. 

The whorled branches of the white pine.

With trees, having access to look really closely at all the various parts can sometimes be difficult due to their size. Folded into the branch category, I often tell people to look up at a tree’s silhouette and try to observe the nuances and distinctions between them from their shape and structure. When you do this, you’ll often be able to garner the branching pattern just by following the train of the trunk to branch to twig. Or you might observe that more conical shape typical of many of our evergreen trees. It might not fully help you identify the tree solely looking at silhouette, but once you know what the tree species is, it may contribute to your identification tools generally so you’re quicker on your toes and more firm in your identification. 

Bark 

The outer bark is an important distinguishing feature of our woody plants, again especially in winter. To the unaccustomed eye, all tree barks might look the same, a sea of grey and brown. But as you look more closely and more comparatively, each tree has a very unique bark appearance and structure. The wild black cherry, for instance, has very dark bark that splits into small flakes, giving it the appearance of being covered in “burnt potato chips.” The American beech tree has extremely smooth light grey bark, like elephant skin. Black locusts have yellowish-brown bark that is very textured, almost ropey. The hop hornbeam looks like its light bark has been shredded by a cat scratching at it. All the species of birches have very distinct lines running horizontally on their bark, made up of small dots called “lenticels,” breathing pathways for the the tree. These are just a few helpful descriptors I use to remember them, but mostly this bark familiarity comes over time, from observing and cross-comparing after using the other ID techniques to fully confirm. Never be afraid to take pictures and quiz yourself later, like flashcards!

Black cherry bark: looks like “burnt potato chips”

The smooth silvery-grey bark of a young black birch. Those light horizontal lines are called lenticels, breathing pathways for the bark, and are a distinct feature.

Black locust has almost yellowish, thick rough bark that looks to me like rope

The shagbark hickory bark peels off on the top and bottom of long smooth strips, so it looks like it’s curling and shaggy. Bats and critters sometimes nest underneath those curls.

Buds

Perhaps the most crucial ID tool in winter, buds are next year’s fresh growth and leaves and flowers, encapsulated in distinct little pockets throughout the winter before erupting open in spring. Every tree and woody plant has a really unique bud. Some are hairy and large, some are smooth, some are small and scaled, some are bright pink or bright yellow. When using an identification guide or key, remember to look in the index in the back for descriptions of the many, many botany terms that will be used to describe buds, but trust yourself—if it looks fuzzy, fuzzy is what it is. There are just often fancier words used in botany for that.

Right around the buds of next year’s growth is usually a scar left behind from last year’s after the leaf fell off. This is called the leaf scar or bud scar. These are often uniquely shaped as well, with distinct formations of small dots inside it where nutrients passed between branch and leaf. This is another characteristic to observe closely, which can tell you what plant you are holding between your fingers!

The bright pinkish red bud of the basswood—take note of its distinct belly or bulge on one side.

The lighter coloured bit here is the bud scar from last year’s leaf—this is an ash tree. The vascular bundle scars leave behind a distinct C shape, or a smile.

The golden bud of the bitternut hickory.

Walnuts, both black and white, have the quintessential “monkey face” bud scar. White walnuts or butternuts also have little fuzzy eyebrows on theirs and a generally fuzzier bud appearance.

Some other considerations:

Leaves

There are a few trees that gloriously keep their leaves all throughout the year—the evergreens. If you’re looking for green vibrancy in these grey times, find yourself an evergreen to admire and smell and learn to identify intimately. Most of the evergreens are conifers, meaning they produce naked seeds rather than fleshy ones, inside cone structures. A few common evergreens you might find:

Fir - Fir leaves are needle-like although short, blunt and flat. They typically grow around the twig, but give the appearance of growing in two flat, straight lines along it. Fir cones sit upright on the branch, egg-shaped.

Spruce - Spruce needles are much spikier than firs and come off the twig every which way, making clasping it much sharper an experience. Some spruces have a very droopy look the them, as if their branches were like waterfalls, pouring over and downward. Spruce cones are large, long and thin and hang down off of the branches. 

Juniper - the most common juniper around where I live in New York is also called eastern red cedar. Its leaves are much more scale-like, flat and spreading and their seeds are wrapped up like small misty blue berries that birds, namely cedar waxwings, love to eat. 

Pine - Pines have longer thinner needles than most other evergreens, but distinct based on the species of pine. White pine, the most common, has needles that are about 3 inches long and bundled together in groups of five. The number of needles in a bunch or “fascicle” will often lead you to what species you are interacting with (as will your location!)

Hemlock - Hemlocks have similar needles to those of the fir tree, just shorter. The cones of Hemlock are very small and dangle down at the end of branches like little bells. 

Cedar - the only cedar that grows around here is the northern white cedar, which has very flat, scaly leaves.

The bright evergreen branches of balsam fir

Hangers-on and Hangers-around

Some other identifying plant features for woody plants are the bits and pieces that hang on or hang around  through winter. These are things like nuts and berries, even last year’s leaves. Some you will find still clinging to the tree, some you might hunt for around the base. It’s not always exact to know what nut fell from which tree, but if you find a cache of hickory nut shells on the ground, you do know there must be a hickory tree or two somewhere close by. 

Certain berries will hang on through the winter, like these multiflora rosehips

Some deciduous trees hold onto their leaves, like the American beech seen here. Note its long golden and very shingled or “imbricate” buds

Always look for nuts and old nut shells around the base of trees for ID clues, like these black walnuts.

The teeny tiny bell-shaped cones of the hemlock tree—a sure-fire way to distinguish the hemlock from the fir.

HERBACEOUS PLANTS

Leaves

Depending on where you live, some herbaceous plants (non-woody) persist through the colder months and can be observed growing in the garden path or when you push aside some of the leaf duff. Wintergreen, for instance, Pipsissewa, and Hepatica are a couple woodland-dwellers whose leaves you might come across. Motherwort, Garlic mustard, and Ground Ivy are some open space plants who often keep a few green leaves at their base, even through the coldest times. 

Pyrola americana, one of a few different plants called “Wintergreen,” keeps its leaves through the winter

Another wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens, is also a hearty herbaceous plant!

Sometimes Motherwort basal leaves can be found hanging around through winter if the weather is milder.

And another plant called Wintergreen or Pipsissewa, Chimaphila maculata.

Seed stalks

For the herbaceous plants that don’t stick around, in areas that are not mowed you can often find last year’s flower stalk and old seed head still hanging around. These can often reveal certain identifying features of the dormant plant like flower structure and leaf arrangement—herbaceous plant leaf arrangement is also very important for identification. Some common ones here in our fields are Goldenrod, wild Bee Balm, and Milkweed.  

The old seed heads of wild bee balm by the creek

WINTED IDENTIFICATION GUIDES

Winter Tree Finder by Tom and May Watts

Winter Botany by William Trelease

Winter Weed Finder by Dorcas Miller

Woody Plants of the Northern Forest by Jerry Jenkins- I really like this book for its very realistic, close up photographs of buds. With most ID books, the images are not great, either line drawings or bad photos. This book uses some kind of advanced photo technology and they look very realistic! You can also get these pamphlet versions instead of the big book, much easier to carry around in your pocket in the woods! 

Bark: A Field Guide to the Trees of the Northeast  by Michael Wojtech

A Guide to Wildflowers in Winter by Carol Levine

Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessells- this is a great book, not so much about plant ID, but about how to look at the land around you and figure out what has been happening there, how old the forest is, what species might likely grow there, what aspects of the land impacts them. Great for opening your eyes to the dynamics of all the species together in the ecosystem.