Too Hot to Handle?

Skunk Cabbage is a Warm-blooded Plant!

While already covered in an earlier note on exotic foliage plants that are toxic, Skunk Cabbage also has a secret! And no, it does not contain blood.

Its unattractive and highly smelly flowers erupt in late March when there is still snow on the ground. How CAN they do this?? The phenomenon is called thermogenesis or heat production. They literally melt the snow around them so that growth can start. The plants are not frost-hardy. It is a rare character in plants, but the philodendron also has the ability.

Why would they want to do this? Aside from the ability to warm the soil, heating up allows your fragrance to spread outward, maybe even reaching potential pollinators. Even when you smell like skunks. Some insects are drawn to that um, perfume!

The cost is huge, requiring as much metabolic energy as a small rodent or hummingbird, comments Cynthia Wood, who blogged on warm-blooded plants in 2006. For this reason, the large rosette of leaves of the skunk cabbage do not heat up, just the inflorescence, and only for a short period of time.

Flowers are highly modified, with a purplish hood surrounding the club-shaped spadix or flower-head. The hood, also known as the spathe begins emitting heat and odour once the plant is ready for pollination. Leaves appear in May, their buds exiting the soil as the flower begins to decay.

Nova Scotia may need a whole lot more than skunk cabbage to melt all the snow, but it does illustrate how plants deal with extremes.

Alain Belliveau's snow-melting flowers
More flowers of skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, by Eugene Quigley
Leaves of skunk cabbage, photo by David Mazerolle