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Skunk Cabbage)
Symplocarpus foetidus, commonly known as Skunk Cabbage, is a low growing, foul smelling plant that prefers wetlands. It blooms early in the year. It is the only species in the genus, although Lysichitum americanum is similar.
Skunk Cabbages are known to sometimes live hundreds of years, and botanists speculate that a single plant could survive a thousand years or more. They reproduce by hard, pea-sized seeds which fall in the mud and are carried away by animals or by floods.
Skunk Cabbages have "contractile roots " which contract after growing into the earth. This pulls the stem of the plant deeper into the mud, so that the plant in effect grows downward, not upward. Each year, the plant grows deeper into the earth, so that older plants are practically impossible to dig up. Only the flowers are visible above the mud, with the leafs and stems burried below.
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