What I like about this time of the year is the new leaves coming out, I love the yellow-green color of them. The mountain in back of my house is all yellow-green. The swamp er… wetlands are all green with skunk cabbage.
Just about wherever you go in Connecticut there are skunk cabbages growing including my backyard. For me skunk cabbage goes back, where I grew up the low lands all had skunk cabbages. When I went backpacking in the spring in the Adirondacks you could smell the patch before you got to it.
When you see the flowers poking out of the snow… spring is near!
The flower is purple and believe it or not, the flower generates heat to melt through the snow and ice beating all the other flowers to be pollinated first. And the flower is intersexed… it can pollinate itself.
A third of my backyard is wetlands otherwise know as a swamp, the wetlands provide a buffer between my house and the state road, and right now it is covered with skunk cabbage. Over the years you can tell the seasons by what is growing in right now it is skunk cabbage, and the peepers and frog provide the choir. The ducks have already hatched their young and moved on and the lonely bullfrog is croaking its solo song hoping for a mate to hear it.
The leaves provide shelter to small animals and birds and last through out the summer and die off in the fall.
It is another sign of spring just like the first robin or the apple trees in blossom.
Aside from the name (skunk cabbage!) that's a lovely image you have painted.
ReplyDeleteMany many moons ago when I was much, much younger there was a herbalist who lived across the field and down the tracks from my home. She was a member of the Wangunk Tribe. I remember her collecting the roots and the seeds of the skunk Cabbage plant to use in some of her treatments. How we laughed at that as we used skunk cabbage to rub on grumpy old people's doorstep. Until- I remember her treating old man Skinner who dug wells when he was very sick with some type of lung infection. Old man Skinner lived in a shack down past the mudhole. We were very surprised that he lived as the doctor had just about given up on him. After that many of us consulted with Aunt Mae before we went to a doctor and all of us lived. This is a true story which appears in my book, Harry Loves Benny, OUT in the woods.
ReplyDeleteI love to see the Skunk Cabbage come up each spring and each spring I am reminded of Mae the herbalist and Mr. Skinner.
Loved this post so much. I also have wetlands behind me and pine barrens and the bay on one side. I used to go hiking but sans backpack as I wasn't strong enough to carry one. I once tried to put my baby son in a baby carrier on my back.. he was probably all of 14 lbs. and I nearly fell over backwards. That was the end of trying to carry backpacks, etc.
ReplyDelete