During Friday's forest management lab I found this plant near one of the streams leading into the Waynesboro Reservoir. It turns out it is a skunk cabbage (thanks Beth for the id) just emerging from the soil. In the bottom photo I removed the leaves to show the flower. The plant has a strong odor that it uses to attract flies to pollinate. It was quite striking to see this purple bulb pushing out of the green moth! I will have to go back to get pictures of the mature plant later. Follow this link to the
Wikipedia article on skunk cabbage.
