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Author Topic: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...  (Read 2356 times)

Offline tjc1

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Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« on: March 01, 2018, 06:35:48 pm »
I watched a bee load up her baskets with skunk cabbage pollen today - wish I had my camera. I can imagine on her return: "But mom, I HATE skunk cabbage pollen...!" (I suppose that should be, "But nurse...") Another 60+ day here in Mass, with busy bees bringing in lots of pollen from the cabbage, bleep willows and an unidentified dark orange pollen. Feels like spring, but we are not fooled ;)

Offline beepro

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2018, 08:33:53 pm »
You mean the pollen taste like skunk smell too? 

Offline Acebird

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2018, 08:41:47 pm »
Skunks have come out of hibernation here and become road kill but not the cabbage.
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Offline beepro

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2018, 03:46:36 am »
How about road kill skunk stew + the (real) cabbage?

Offline GSF

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2018, 08:14:59 am »
Skunk cabbage is a plant. If I remember right this is a plant actually generates heat. You can identify it because snow will not be sticking to leaves or the stalks.
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Offline Acebird

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2018, 10:36:13 am »
If I remember right this is a plant actually generates heat.
I don't know how true that is but it is capable of burrowing up through the snow.  The leaves are darker than the snow so they absorb the suns energy.  I would guess that is what melts the snow around it.
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Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2018, 12:04:48 pm »
So far as I know the selloum philodendron is the only plant that generates heat, and that's in its bloom that lasts one night, to attract a scarab beetle to pollinate it.
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Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2018, 04:01:12 pm »
Yes Dallas, I googled.  The blossoms convert fat(lipids) to energy in the form of heat.  Thanks for posting, otherwise I would have no idea that a plant can do this.  Kind of cool to me.
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Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #8 on: March 03, 2018, 02:41:12 pm »
Yes Dallas, I googled.  The blossoms convert fat(lipids) to energy in the form of heat.  Thanks for posting, otherwise I would have no idea that a plant can do this.  Kind of cool to me.
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I don't know if the source you saw mentioned it, but the plant has to be about 17 years old before it blooms.  Kinda like puberty, huh?  Our plant bloomed once, at about 18 years of age and is now about 51 years old, but conditions have not been right since it bloomed that one time.  It was a very strange thing to feel the heat inside the blossom.  Next morning it was closed up.
"Liberty lives in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no laws, no court can save it." - Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Offline tjc1

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #9 on: March 03, 2018, 04:12:38 pm »
from http://natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic4/skunkcabbage.htm

Pretty amazing! I read somewhere else recently about the warmth also attracting early insects as pollinators.

"A couple of times I've been lucky enough to see spathes growing up through a thin layer of ice, the ice melted around the spathe in a circular form. This is an indication of skunk cabbage's remarkable capacity to produce heat when flowering. If you catch the right time, you can put your finger into the cavity formed by the spathe and when you touch the flower head, your finger tip warms up noticeably. Biologist Roger Knutson found that skunk cabbage flowers produce warmth over a period of 12-14 days, remaining on average 20? C (36? F) above the outside air temperature, whether during the day or night. During this time they regulate their warmth, as a warm-blooded animal might!

Physiologically the warmth is created by the flower heads breaking down substances while using a good deal of oxygen. The rootstock and roots store large amounts of starch and are the likely source of nutrients for this break down. The more warmth produced, the more substances and oxygen consumed. Knutson found that the amount of oxygen consumed is similar to that of a small mammal of comparable size."

Offline Acebird

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #10 on: March 04, 2018, 09:11:30 am »
tjc1 thanks for this link.  I am sure I have plenty of this in the back yard but I didn't know what to look for.  When the snow melts down a bit I will see if I can get out there and take a look.
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Van, Arkansas, USA

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2018, 07:25:11 pm »
Dallas, that is incredible, you have a plant that is 51 years old.  For a tree, this would not be eye catching, for a house plant that is amazing.  Maybe the plant is outdoors, shaded, that is still a long time as most folks seldom stay in a single home for half a century.  I am just curious if you have pets how long they live?  How old are your bees?
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Offline yes2matt

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #12 on: March 04, 2018, 07:45:45 pm »
Skunk cabbage is a plant. If I remember right this is a plant actually generates heat. You can identify it because snow will not be sticking to leaves or the stalks.

Hellebore heats up too; yeasts transferred on bumblebee tongues catalyze the nectar to warm the bloom.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/02/05/rspb.2009.2252


Offline tjc1

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2018, 10:43:58 pm »
tjc1 thanks for this link.  I am sure I have plenty of this in the back yard but I didn't know what to look for.  When the snow melts down a bit I will see if I can get out there and take a look.

It likes to grow in swamps, or the wet borders of streams, so you might not find it in your yard. Hard to miss at the early stage of flowering as it looks like something from a sci-fi movie! The later leaves look pretty normal - but they smell skunky.

Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Stinky job, but someone has to do it...
« Reply #14 on: March 05, 2018, 01:32:32 am »
Dallas, that is incredible, you have a plant that is 51 years old.  For a tree, this would not be eye catching, for a house plant that is amazing.  Maybe the plant is outdoors, shaded, that is still a long time as most folks seldom stay in a single home for half a century.  I am just curious if you have pets how long they live?  How old are your bees?
Blessings
Van,
The plant used to be huge, but I moved it into the garage when we were expecting a hard freeze.  Then it got too large and I had surgery for colon cancer, so I left it out to freeze.  It froze back to the soil line in the pot and came back in the spring, so it has remained outdoors since 2001.  When we moved to the house we live in in Dallas in 1989, we had one van just to carry the potted plants.  I think there were about 75 or 80 at that time. 

My one hive is three years old.  The bees, of course are from a few days to a few months old, as most bees are.  We have no pets and are now down to about five plants that go into the garage when it freezes.  Our fellow Master Gardeners certainly appreciated receiving all our potted plants, but not as much as we appreciated giving them away.
"Liberty lives in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no laws, no court can save it." - Judge Learned Hand, 1944