Symplocarpus foetidus (Eastern Skunk Cabbage)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Lynn Harper — fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203366736

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Susan Berry — fig. b Susan Berry, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204740963

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Tom Scavo — fig. d Tom Scavo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203358597

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Erin Lalime — fig. f Erin Lalime, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202070705

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Howard Williams — fig. g Howard Williams, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 201337701

Symplocarpus foetidus, photographed by Caleb Catto — fig. h Caleb Catto, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202498300

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 5,349 observations

154

561

2601

1824

187

Flowering observations of Symplocarpus foetidus by month
Month	Observations
Jan	154
Feb	561
Mar	2601
Apr	1824
May	187
Jun	6
Jul	0
Aug	0
Sep	2
Oct	1
Nov	5
Dec	8

Peak flowering in Mar, from 5,349 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 9 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Dracontium foetidum L.
Ictodes foetidus (L.) Bigelow
Pothos foetidus (L.) Aiton
Pothos putorii Barton
Spathyema angusta Raf.
Spathyema foetida (L.) Raf.
Spathyema lanceolata Raf.
Spathyema latifolia Raf.
Symplocarpus foetidus (L.) Salisb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.