Skunk Cabbage Paradise!

I know, I know, I've been posting photos of Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) for a couple of weeks now. But all those specimens were total wimps compared to the gigantic ones that thrive in a swale at the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton.  I'm not sure what kind of nutrients this particular mud provides, but the Skunk Cabbage plants that grow here are prodigious both in size and in the number of spathes that constitute a cluster.  By my count, I discern EIGHT flowering spathes in this one.

As for size of individual spathes, just look at how tall these gorgeously scarlet ones have grown!

And this was my lucky day for photographing a cluster with spathes so wide open that their flowering spadices within were completely visible.  How often have I found examples where both sexes of the florets -- pistillate (top left) and staminate -- were displaying within the same plant at the same time?  Never, before I encountered this lovely clump.

Sadly, while trying to get close enough to photograph these plants, I inadvertently stepped on one. In that mishap,  my big foot crushed the spathe but did not damage the spadix within.  And what a find this spadix was!  Never before had I encountered a spadix displaying the spent pistillate florets yielding to the staminate ones emerging around the base of the pistillate ones! How cool it that?