Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory by George Szanto

Author:George Szanto
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Ponds & Swamps, Nature, Lakes, Literary, Personal Memoirs, Ecosystems & Habitats, Biography & Autobiography, Environmentalists & Naturalists
ISBN: 9781927366097
Publisher: Brindle and Glass
Published: 2013-03-05T21:07:15.258000+00:00

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New on the bog this April Fool’s Day: the skunk cabbage is showing, bull lily pads are starting to emerge, and pond skaters are back on the water.

Skunk cabbage, also known as swamp lantern, a prettier name, is the first of the spring’s native wildflowers; it must have already stuck its tip out of the water a week ago, but I haven’t noticed till today. We’ve had forsythia out for a couple of weeks (from Chinese friends I learned the word for forsythia in Chinese, translated to English, is welcome spring). The forsythia begins yellowing just as the first daffodils open; the earlier snowdrops and crocuses have already departed, but these are introduced plants, not native to West Coast gardens. Swamp lantern, however, is indigenous to many parts of North America, including Gabriola Island. In places where there’s still snow when the skunk cabbage emerges, it gives off enough heat to melt the snow above and around it. The plant reaches a temperature up to twenty degrees Fahrenheit higher than the air surrounding it, day or night; as the air cools off, so does the skunk cabbage. That sheath-like yellow outer segment with long, thin maroon lines one sees first is a modified leaf, looking like a cape or a hood, to protect the yellow spike at the centre. The yellow appears fuzzy. On closer examination, the fuzz is made up of hundreds of very small flowers. It does in fact give off a pungent odour, but only some find it repugnant. Bees and gnats love it, which the skunk cabbage appreciates—these are the insects it needs for pollination.

We have only one skunk cabbage, transplanted to the bog by us eight years ago. (Strictly speaking it’s not indigenous to the bog—just to a place half a mile from the house.) There’s a springtime stream along a dirt road there where skunk cabbage grows in abundance. Kit and I had pulled on our gumboots and brought along the shovels. We figured if we dug up half a dozen, they’d reproduce over the years and we’d have a small colony.

Good idea, but difficult to carry out. We stepped into the muddy stream edge and started to dig at a plant maybe a foot high. We quickly discovered that the skunk cabbage’s root system is complex, and prodigious. We’d gone two feet into the mud and still hadn’t found the bottom of the root. We eventually dug up three plants, all smaller than our first attempt, brought them back and buried the roots at the edge of the bog pond, deep as we could. All three bloomed the first year, two in the second; only one has survived since. And it hasn’t reproduced. But it’s there, and when it emerges each year it seems to shout out, like the Chinese forsythia, Welcome spring!

The flower of the bull lily, as we call it—it’s also known as cow lily, or spatterdock—looks a lot like the yellow water lily but can grow three times as large.

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