The other day I came across this while exploring with Ellen. I have occasionally seen news segments on various crops being grown in the middle of the forest to avoid detection, but never thought I would stumble upon such an operation myself. This is clearly a clandestine romaine lettuce farm set up in the wilds down by the river. But I support the use of lettuce (for health reasons!), and am sworn to secrecy so that the lettuce patch doesn’t get raided…
Give it a couple of weeks and the smell will make it clearer, but I’m fairly certain that this is skunk cabbage. Very common around here in marshy areas like that – but probably not as delicious as a wild head of romaine!!
Looks like you’re right, Megan, it does look like the Eastern Skunk Cabbage as depicted on Wikipedia. Thanks for helping identify it. I have to say that it would be a lot more fun if it were wild romaine…
It would have been much more fun had your initial idea been correct – but I’m glad we resolved that before you and Ellen decided to harvest some for dinner!
And you should take her back when it is in its full glory – in the heat of the summer (and maybe even sooner), the smell from a plant is pretty impressive. I grew up with a ton of it in my marshy backyard and thought it was really cool at that age!