The Skunk Cabbage at Seven Ponds Nature Center continues to surprise me. Cheryl English from Black Cat Pottery and I recently re-visited the Seven Ponds Nature Center on July 9 and found the summertime form of the Skunk Cabbage to be just as astonishing as the early spring form.
The foliage that this plant develops is remarkably vigorous, abundant and just plain durable-looking.
This one leaf is fully one foot wide and two feet long. And it grows in the light shade of high branches from a stand of mixed oak and ash trees. The soil conditions are moist - the area is near ponds that flood in the springtime, so early summer moisture levels are still high.
Companion plants like these ferns show how large the Skunk Cabbage leaves are on average - plus the illumination and soil conditions that they favor.
At the base of the clump of leaves is the early development of a seed pod:
For this image, I used my closeup rig with a speedlight in a 24" umbrella with radio poppers and a remote release. I also use the mirror lockup function to minimize camera shake. An aperture-priority exposure with a minus one stop on the ambient makes the flash exposure more dominant and keeps the background a little darker.
Another garden photography tip: "tidy up!" Making sure that the area is free of distracting debris will always help focus attention on the important parts, rather than something that looks lout of place.
And so the cycle continues. We'll be revisiting again in the late fall to see what new surprises this remarkable plant will reveal.
