2025 HIGH-QUALITY WILDLIFE WALL CALENDAR AVAILABLE

 

CONTACT: bA r B2 20 3 0@ ya H o Odo tCoM

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SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP!

 https://marylandnature.wildapricot.org/event-5904374

PLEASE JOIN US AT MUSEUM STORE SUNDAY FOR YOUR NATURE-THEMED HOLIDAY GIFTS!

Dec. 1, 2024, 10 am - 3 pm

The Natural History Society of Maryland joins more than 2,100 museum stores, across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 25 countries, and five continents, participating in Museum Store Sunday. The museum will be open. Come explore, exercise your curiosity muscle, then pick up some great gifts that can be found nowhere else. Seriously.

To make the event even more memorable,  NHSM has invited some special guests to join for the day.

• Barbara Saffir, an award-winning wildlife photographer.
• Paul Nevin, the leading authority on the rock art of the lower Susquehanna River has just published, A Guide to the Safe Harbor Petroglyphs. Paul will be on hand to read from the book and have books for sale and signature.
• Sue Fierston, nature printmaker.
• April Downey, with Charm City Craftworks.
• Jani Hileman with Jord’s Hoard ceramics.
• More local artists and authors goods for sale within the gift shop.

We will also have hoards of minerals and fossils and books available.

On Museum Store Sunday, shoppers will not only find quality gifts filled with inspiration and educational value, but through their purchases will also directly support NHSM as proceeds at museum stores directly support the educational missions and programs of the parent institution.

Admission to the museum is free. Free 300-million-year-old fossils with purchase. Please help us plan by RSVPing.

The Natural History Society of Maryland is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and contributions are tax-deductible.

The mission of the Natural History Society of Maryland is to foster stewardship of Maryland’s natural heritage by conserving its natural history collections, educating its citizenry, and inspiring its youth to pursue careers in the natural sciences.

PHOTOS & MORE

FOR A LINK TO SOME OF MY FAVE PHOTOS, PLEASE VISIT: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/olympusbjs/albums/72157707966110305

FOR SOME OF MY AWARD-WINNING PHOTOS, CLICK HERE AND HEAD TOWARD THE BOTTOM OF THE POSTS:

http://www.walkingwashingtondc.com/

TO ATTEND OUR BOUNDLESS BLUEBELLS HIKE ON 4/14/2024, CLICK HERE: 

https://www.marylandnature.org/get-involved/events/event/boundless-bluebells-photography-hike/

WACKY WINTER WILDFLOWER

         WACKY WINTER WILDFLOWER: 

                     Eastern Skunk Cabbage

Care to eyeball one of the wackiest wildflowers on the planet?  No need to blaze a trail to Borneo or Brazil. Exotic-looking native Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) thrives practically in our own backyards in Northern Virginia. 

 

Not only is Eastern skunk cabbage Virginia's earliest blooming native wildflower, but it also generates and regulates its own heat, changes color, and even transforms its sex.  And if that isn't wacky enough, this oddball flower typically starts blooming in frigid January in Northern Virginia.  No other Virginia native wildflower blooms in January.  

                                                                                                                                    Eastern skunk cabbage is one of only a small number of plants on the planet that is capable of regulating the heat it produces, known as thermoregulation.  So whether it's 5 degrees or 50 degrees outside, the plant can produce enough heat to reach about 70 degrees for 10 to 14 days during its initial female phase.  This is the optimum temperature for maturation and fertilization of the female flower, says Eastern skunk cabbage expert Siobhan Percey of Maryland.  The plant's heat and odor help lure pollinators inside its hooded spathe, a thick, curvy, and colorful cabbage-like leaf. 

 

The spathe's colors can vary from solid and variegated cranberry to chartreuse.  Inside the spathe is its “spadix,” a ball-like structure that somewhat resembles a coronavirus.                                                                        

As it transforms from a female (with little female stigmas poking out all over the spheroidal ball) into a male (sprouting yellow male anthers with yellow pollen), it also starts to change from cranberry/pink to butter-yellow.

 

Although the Virginia Native Plant Society says that Eastern skunk cabbage possesses “only modest beauty,” some fans feel that this curvaceous creation with jewel-tone colors and Georgia O’Keeffe forms is worthy of the Museum of Modern Art.

 

So, where do you find this pint-sized pulchritudinous plant?  In the muck.  As an obligate wetland plant, it thrives in the gooey black muck, with its contractile roots pulling it deep into the earth.  By late spring, it has evolved into a tall, tropical-looking wave of lush green leaves.  And by summer, the leaves of this perennial have all but disappeared as some of its roughly two-inch berry-like fruits have fallen into the muck to start the cycle of life anew.

Eastern skunk cabbage in the snow is a memorable sight. Just ask one of the fourteen hardy members of ARMN (Arlington Regional Master Naturalists, a chapter of Virginia Master Naturalists) and their guests who trekked along a snowy trail in 24-degree, windy weather on Jan. 21, 2024 to learn about the wacky wildflower and the steamy heat it generates to attract pollinators.  Some even got down on their hands and knees in the spongy snow to peer inside the small opening of its hood-like spathes with penlights to check out its teensy-weensy yellow flowers.  And they compared notes about whether the Eastern skunk cabbage actually smelled, even when one was accidentally smushed and only then did it start smelling.  Most said they couldn't smell it, despite skunk cabbage's practically malicious moniker.

 

"Eastern skunk cabbage is just a fascinating plant," said ARMN member Manoma Sirisena. "You can read about it, but it doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it in person."

 

Serisena and her colleagues ventured along the Foxstone Park Trail in Vienna, VA for the continuing education hike that I led for ARMN.  I have been informally studying and photographing Eastern skunk cabbage for several years. 

 

And since they began this "Skunks, Spies, and Other Winter Wonders" trek by the site of one of America's most shattering spy stories, they also learned about FBI agent-turned Russian spy Robert Hanssen, whom the FBI calls the most damaging spy in American history.  Hanssen lived nearby and was busted making his final drop at the Foxstone Park pedestrian bridge.  Hanssen will never return to Foxstone Park—but the wacky winter wildflowers will return every year.                                                         

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