Category: March

The other skunk of spring

Skunk cabbage is a fascinating, complex plant capable of generating its own heat, allowing it to poke through ice and snow in late winter.

Skunk cabbage doesn’t have a ring-of-spring name. “Trillium” rolls off the tongue like white petals off the stem, and you can almost hear trilling in the cattails when you say “red-winged blackbirds.” But, skunk cabbage?

The plant’s first problem is obvious—it’s first word. Unless you consider a skunk sighting in March as a sign of spring, there’s nothing inviting about skunk unless you have an odd lean in smells. And cabbage? All wrapped up in itself, the sauer of kraut is rather dull compared to cherry tomatoes and acorn squash.

No matter its name, skunk cabbage vies for first wildflower of spring with crocuses and coltsfoot. But you may rarely see skunk cabbage, for it blooms in swampy muck where you have to wet your toes to get a look. I did.

I remembered once seeing skunk cabbage next to a small trout stream. So with the vernal equinox nearing, I went looking for spring in the lowlands. An easterly breeze chilled me as I walked a trail to the creek. After a modest snowmelt, there was only a trickle of water in which the leaves of watercress and forget-me-not were greening. Spring arriving.

Tiny brook trout flashed in the water at the sight of my shadow, darting in unison for cover, then drifting back in sight as I paused. These fingerlings from the fall spawn spent winter covered in a gravel depression. Now they learn how to hide above gravel.

A crow cawed in the distance. A red-bellied woodpecker squawked nearby as I sat down on a streamside bench among the pale green horsetail rushes. A flock of chickadees danced past. White pines towered in rich green against a blue sky on the hillside rising from the other side of the creek.

But where was the skunk cabbage? I walked along the creek until, ready to give up, I stumbled into a bog. Through the alders I saw spots of maroon among the decaying leaves and moldy logs. There they were—skunk cabbage plants poking through a mat of mud and swamp matter. I eased into the viscous seepage of spring. 

Skunk cabbage’s wine-red mottled hood, partially open, protects the flowerhead spadix inside. On the spadix are tiny, straw-colored bumps which are flowers without petals. I caught a whiff of a musky, skunky smell, so there was no need to get my nose into the hood for a closer whiff. Though unpleasant to humans, the odor is what draws honey bees to the flowerhead during pollination.

At this point, a course in botany would be helpful. Skunk cabbage is a fascinating, complex plant capable of generating its own heat, allowing it to poke through ice and snow in late winter. While some refer to the hood as a modified leaf, the true leaves, lance-shaped and three feet long, don’t unfurl until the hood and flower fade to the ground in late spring.

Deer may eat the young leaves, and bears are known to dig up the edible roots. In late summer, berry-like fruits, each containing one seed, detach from the egg-shaped fruit head. The seeds will germinate if not eaten by birds.  

Skunk cabbage forces spring’s hand. I try to, but I find that spring comes on its own terms, more in ripples than in waves. Skunk cabbage, however, makes its own warm wave.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Icy entity of March

Morning revealed the night work of nature’s ice artist while oak leaves shimmered in the glow of sunrise. I thought about March, the month already half over, how we always seem to wish it would just end. Wish it were April.

But March is more than a bridge between winter and spring. We may have to look for its allure, but it does offer more than shrinking snowbanks and rising temperatures. I looked where yesterday’s puddle of melt had turned to ice overnight. Imagine, nature crystalized this piece for my brief enjoyment. In only a matter of hours it would puddle again under the sun’s growing power. 

On this small, hard canvas was ice as smooth as a mirror reflecting the sky, and also ice textured and feathered like a bird’s wingtips. There were delicate shelves of ice, swirls (cat-ice), and wandering wavy lines, like chimney smoke on a calm morning. I stared at the icy creation, seeing a fallen bird, the eyes of a ghost’s upside-down face, and the geographic form of the Red Sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This intricate piece—one of a kind sculpted in darkness—would soon be water again, its artist in hiding, planning tonight’s design.

I returned to my coffee, where through a breezeway window my eye caught a kitchen window reflecting the morning. The glass was filled with rust-brown oak leaves—a mirrored, blurred image with a blue-sky background. Any slight movement of my head shifted the image. It was fluid, not frozen, a rolling scene of leaves preferring to move sideways, not fall. 

Not yet, not in March. For March, despite home of the vernal equinox, is more winter than spring. Oak leaves hang on to winter’s very end, as do we. The leaves tumble in spring, as we fall head over heels for the season of rebirth.

Oaks, like the beeches, retain their dead leaves in what botanists call marcescence—the retention of dead plant matter. Why? There are theories, only theories stress some, since nature can be coy regarding its ways. Perhaps a spring leaf drop delivers fresh organic matter to the soil under the tree. Perhaps leaf retention protects the tiny buds that formed last fall and now wait to swell in spring, pushing off their winter protector.

But why only oaks and beeches? May it be these species are still evolving into fully deciduous trees from their evergreen roots? Yes, the beech family also includes some evergreens, whose winter needles provide us with greenness when we most need color.

We wait for spring warmth and the color palette it awakens. New life all around us, new life within us, while oak leaves colored and dried last fall wait for their demise. They make their last stand, above puddles that form and freeze, thaw and refreeze, in a month that moves us along in a frustrating tease. 

April will have its own agenda—showers that puddle and not freeze, tree buds swelling into tiny leaves—while icy artwork and spent leaves are swept away in streams of spring.

Note: For more essays like this, my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available by contacting me at davegreschner@icloud.com or 715-651-1638. The book is also available through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tale), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), Cable (Redbery Books),and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.