Skunk Cabbage Hunt

Last night we went looking for skunk cabbage near our Pennsylvania home. Skunk cabbage has a silly name, but it has one of the very first flowers of spring.

At first, I was worried that we had come to the forest too early. Would we even find the skunk cabbage? Under the trees, there was so much snow! Even though the temperature was 60 degrees, the air coming off the snow was chilly.

The place to find skunk cabbage was over a rise and off the trail a bit. We headed through the mud, glad that we had worn boots. Would we find any blossoms?

Now, the flowers that we were looking for don't look like ordinary flowers. Skunk cabbage flowers are very unusual. They look like a reddish hood poking out of the ground.

We bent down to look more carefully and--there they were! Skunk cabbage blossoms!

As you can see, the flowers are popping up through the snow! I had read in many sources that skunk cabbages are able to melt the snow around them, but I had never seen this phenomenon so clearly. Here is a closer view of one of the flowers. You can just barely see the hooded structure.

After we found the skunk cabbage, we went exploring some more. Along the trail, we found a vernal pool. But no salamanders or fairy shrimp yet--instead, lots of ice! It's hard to see in the picture, but there was a shallow layer of newly melted water on top of a thick layer of ice. Even though the temperatures are supposed to be warmer later this week, I doubt that we'll find many mole salamanders.

A walk in early spring can be surprising. What can you discover outdoors?