Credits

Created by Virginia Pellington, Christina Prehn, and Robert Copus, Explore Natural Communities Interns Summer 2016, NatureServe.

Bird sounds from xeno-canto.org: Wood Thrush, recorded by Paul Marvin. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. Pileated Woodpecker, recorded by Paul Marvin. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.

Music: Windswept, by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0

Photo: Red Maple Seepage Swamp, by Jianyu Wu, courtesy of NatureServe. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0.

Transcript

Podcast time: 2:40 minutes

Arriving in the Red Maple Seepage Swamp in late spring or early summer is reminiscent of stepping into a fairytale. As you walk along the Swamp Trail, an extravagance of green spreads before you, and cinnamon fern  grows tall with cascading green fronds. At this time of year, below the red maple  and other trees, you can’t help but notice low-growing plants with broad, green leaves that resemble the shape of elephant ears. This is the skunk-cabbage , and the leaves are everywhere!

But in late winter or early spring—long before the leafy plethora of green arrives—things look totally different in this natural community. The swamp floor is either covered by snow or left nearly bare and mucky after the snow leaves.

Skunk-cabbage has the ability to generate heat, which allows it to literally melt the snow on and around itself in late winter to bloom. You might be thinking to yourself, “How does a plant do that?” The plant produces energy from starch stored in its roots. This allows it to increase its metabolism, heat up, and spread its scent—even in frigid temperatures. On the nearly bare swamp floor, you’ll find mottled dark purple, waxy hoods emerging from the ground. This is the flower of the skunk-cabbage. You may detect its pungent, stinky smell. Although its scent is similar to the unpleasant smell of rotting meat, the skunk-cabbage is a unique and beautiful plant. Its foul smell attracts the likes of flies and beetles, which crawl into the open side of the hooded flower and pollinate the round spadix inside. The smell also functions as a defense mechanism against being eaten by white-tailed deer and other animals.

As the growing season progresses, this natural community transforms nearly right before your eyes. The floor of dark, hood-shaped flowers gives way to an explosion of leafy cabbages. Then, as the summer season gets hotter, the skunk-cabbage retreats and becomes overshadowed by other plants such as lizard’s tail. The lizard’s tail is appropriately named with a slender stalk of tiny, white flowers that droops at the tip to resemble the curved, pointy tail of a lizard. Once again, this community is transformed—this time into a sea of fluffy white tails.

In Great Falls Park, the Red Maple Seepage Swamp grows in an abandoned curve of the Potomac River. The swamp itself is a mucky, wet place, so be sure to stay on the trail on the swamp’s edge and soak up all of the beauty this natural community has to offer.

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