skunk cabbage

Skunk cabbage is so called because of the fetid odour it gives off, especially when bruised. It has smooth heart-shaped leaves and a globular fruit which is sometimes known as swamp cabbage.

Either of two disagreeably smelling North American plants of the arum family Araceae: Symplocarpus foetidus, of the east, growing in wet soils and having large, cabbagelike leaves and a fleshy blunt spike of tiny flowers in a purple, hooded sheath; or Lysichiton americanum of the west, having similar appearance except that the sheath enclosing a more elongated flower spike is yellow.