THE SKUNK CABBAGE 7 



revealing the enclosed spike on which the real seed- 

 producing flowers are clustered. The leaves develop 

 later in the season, when they give some of the 

 marshy hollows a distinctly tropical aspect. Large, 

 oval, and pale green, often more than two feet in 

 length, they rise from the buried root- stalks that 

 bore the flowers in early spring. 



The Skunk Cabbage deserves its quite uncompli- 

 mentary name, for even its devoted admirers, who 

 seek it as the earliest of all the awakening flowers, 

 feel constrained to apologise for the odour it exhales. 

 It generally escapes the indiscriminate destroyers 

 of flowers, for its attractive colours begin to fade 

 before they are abroad. It chooses inaccessible places 

 where the treacherous mud is a safe protection. Its 

 odour, too, is a means of defence. And its great, 

 fleshy, tropical richness and strong colouring seem 

 quite disappointing when taken from their natural 

 surroundings. Sometimes a rubber-booted boy is 

 seen walking proudly through a swamp or along a 

 footpath with the prize in his hand, carried by the 

 invariably short stalk, and suggestive of the utility 

 of fruit or vegetables rather than the ornamentation 

 of flowers. The perennial root-stalk, deeply buried, 

 insures the perpetuation of the Skunk Cabbage. 

 And with each returning spring its favourite hiding- 

 places will be sought by all who long for the earliest 

 news of the great awakening. 



