A Story about Skunk Cabbage

A  story about Skunk Cabbage

There is a wild plant called the Skunk Cabbage.  It has wonderful broad green leaves, and right now in the spring, it has a yellow leaf protecting a large cone shaped flower stock, which will be beautiful when it blooms.  It is everywhere in the swampy, marshy land we are traveling through.

When I was growing up, and we were going to my Grandmother’s in Oregon, we stopped  on the road outside Pendleton Oregon to pick my grandmother a beautiful bouquet of the bright yellow flowers growing in the foothills. (In fact, as I think of it, it was called Cabbage Hill!)   It was still cold out and the heater was on in the car. It wasn’t long before the powerful smell of skunk came wafting through the car.  It took a while to realize it was the flowers!  As we opened the trunk to get rid of them, there were also red ants crawling all over.  We had to empty the trunk and get rid of both the flowers and the ants.  My father was not happy over our bright idea!  But it has brought back lots of memories and laughs over the years.