When does Eastern Skunk Cabbage bloom in New Jersey?

Most often in March. Across 293 dated, research-grade observations of Symplocarpus foetidus in New Jersey, the flowering season runs roughly March.

Peak March In flower 293 Examined 501 State New Jersey

Flowering 293 in flower of 501 examined

29%

53%

82%

51%

11%

Proportion of examined Symplocarpus foetidus in New Jersey in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	4	14	29%	12% to 55%
Feb	51	97	53%	43% to 62%
Mar	193	235	82%	77% to 87%
Apr	44	87	51%	40% to 61%
May	0	31	0%	0% to 11%
Jun	1	9	11%	2% to 44%
Jul	0	19	0%	0% to 17%
Aug	0	2	too few examined
Sep	0	1	too few examined
Oct	0	2	too few examined
Nov	0	1	too few examined
Dec	0	3	too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Symplocarpus foetidus in New Jersey observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 293 of 501 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.wt38fd.

What this is, and what it is not

This is a record of when people in New Jersey found Symplocarpus foetidus in flower, not a forecast. It is computed only from observations made in New Jersey, so it is not the species’ global average dragged onto a map: the same plant flowers on different dates in different places, and that is the entire point of the page.

It will not tell you what your particular plant will do this year. Bloom time moves with the season, with altitude, and with the weather, and a warm February pulls everything forward. We publish the distribution and the sample size, and we refuse to draw a month that too few people examined.

The plant

Symplocarpus foetidus

Eastern Skunk Cabbage

Sourcesevery claim on this page

GBIF (iNaturalist Research-grade Observations). Dated flowering annotations in New Jersey. Every record achieved iNaturalist quality grade Research, which is applied upstream at export. 10.15468/dl.wt38fd. Retrieved 2026-07-14.
World Flora Online Plant List. The accepted name. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.