Tips of yellow skunk cabbage appear in the bog, sloughing off dead bracken ferns and decaying maple leaves. Within a few days, a handful of yellow periscopes unwind into bright-yellow half-shells that cradle spikes crosshatched with hundreds of tiny flowers filling the chill air with an astringent, skunky smell. Their scent attracts rove beetles into their strictly feminine spaces where every flower pistil waits ready to receive pollen. But wait a few days females become male, become what they weren’t, produce pollen to satisfy hungry beetles as their female parts retire. Trans plants do their job effective as any other plant.
Mary Thibodeaux Lentz
This article appears in 10 Foliies Anniversary.