Today on a wet talus slope above the
In a delightful book entitled "Of Woods and Other Things," Emma Pitcher wrote of Skunk Cabbage: Ever since winter solstice, days started lengthening and small changes are occurring in our natural world. Skunk cabbages sent up tightly furled green leaf cones last September. Now that their strange internal furnaces are activated, dark red flower spathes are forcing up through ice and snow. (Air inside the spathe can be as much as fifty degrees warmer than outside air, so great is the heat the root generates).
3 comments:
Great picture of the flowers and pollen. It stretches the imagination to consider that the tiny Wolffia is related to this.
Thanks Nick. Isn't Wolffia in the Lemnaceae any more?
Lemnaceae been its own family for a while now but still close to the Araceae.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araceae
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