Symplocarpus combines the Greek word symploce, meaning “connection” and carpos, meaning “fruit”, to indicate that the plant has a can cabbage be frozen fruit. Linnaeus gave the plant its species name of foetidus, Latin for “bad-smelling”.

The plant produces a strong odor, which is repulsive to many but sometimes described as smelling like “fresh cabbage with a slight suggestion of mustard”. Blooming early in the spring, just its blossoms can be seen above the mud. Particularly towards the top or older end of older roots, these marks or wrinkles have an odd ring-like appearance. The plant is generally pulled back into the earth as it develops every year.

The roots permanently wrinkle up due to their contractile activity. As time elapses the entire stem is buried below ground and the plant becomes practically impossible to dig up. While older spathes develop a darker general color with purple smears, younger spathes have a yellowish-green color. With both male and female reproductive organs, Eastern skunk cabbage flowers are perfect. Dichogamy, or the division of gender expression into two temporal periods, is a common feature of blooming plants and serves to avoid self-fertilization. The leafage consists of two whitish sheathing leaves, and they have parallel veins, which is characteristic of monocots.

The true leaves are rolled within the hard-coiled center. When the tips have pierced the encasing sheath-like leaves, they are typically tinted purplish like the plant’s spathe. The first and even second leaves’ tips may have this hue on the exterior. Symplocarpus foetidus reproduce by hard, pea-sized seeds which, when fully grown, drop onto the slimy substrate after developing inside the spadix. Birds, small animals, and floods can then spread the seeds. The native region of the Eastern skunk cabbage is eastern North America.

Its geographic range includes eastern Canada, the northeastern United States, and the states of Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeast and Minnesota in the west. In Canada, the plant’s distribution ranges from western Nova Scotia to southeastern Manitoba. It blooms while there is snow and ice on the ground, yet early insects that also emerge at this time effectively pollinate it. According to certain research, the heat the plant generates may aid in dispersing its odour in the atmosphere in addition to enabling the plant to flourish in cold environments.

Both male and female skunk cabbage plants generated skunk-like floral odours that contained dimethyl disulfide, aliphatic hydrocarbons, carboxylic acids, and esters, whereas only female plants produced aromatic hydrocarbons and indole chemicals. The fact that the spathe is warmer than the surrounding air may induce carrion-feeding insects to enter it more than once, promoting pollination. Calliphora vomitoria and other blowflies are common pollinators of skunk cabbage. Curiously, spiders’ webs were frequently noticed at the entrance to the spathes.

The flower’s carrion-like odor attracts the flies, which become tangled in the spider’s web and become food for the spider. Numerous Native American cultures employed the Eastern skunk cabbage substantially as a medicinal herb, spice, and mystical talisman. The plant was mainly utilised for its antispasmodic and expectorant qualities, which are still used in contemporary herbalism. In particular, the Winnebago and Dakota tribes utilised it to encourage phlegm evacuation in asthma patients. Springtime skunk cabbage growing in a stream bed at the Trexler Nature Preserve in Pennsylvania.