Thursday Snapshot: Skunk Cabbage Seedlings

Skunk cabbage seedlings in early March.

These little lovelies were spotted while out doing some restoration work on family land in Michigan. My aunt spotted these baby skunk cabbage, and since I hadn't seen them for some time it seemed a good opportunity to take a photo.

I know skunk cabbage best as a leafy summer plant, so these little hooded flowers were a surprise. A wee bit of research shows that skunk cabbage prefer to live in wetlands, and that they are some of the earliest flowers to bloom. They are one of the few plants to practice thermogenesis, meaning that they heat the air around and above them. This serves to melt snow and attract their pollinators - flies and other creatures attracted to things that smell like decay.