Adjacent Words

skunk cabbage definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: deciduous perennial low-growing fetid swamp plant of eastern North America having minute flowers enclosed in a mottled greenish or purple cowl-shaped spathe [syn: skunk cabbage, polecat weed, foetid pothos, Symplocarpus foetidus]
2: clump-forming deciduous perennial swamp plant of western North America similar to Symplocarpus foetidus but having a yellow spathe [syn: skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanum]

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 1751 either of two North American perennial herbs of the arum family that occur in shaded wet to swampy areas and have a fetid odor suggestive of a skunk: a. one (Symplocarpus foetidus) of eastern North America that sends up in spring a cowl-shaped brownish-purple spathe b. one (Lysichitum americana) chiefly of the Pacific coast region that has a large yellow spathe

Britannica Concise

Any of three species of plants that grow in temperate bogs and meadows, emitting unpleasant odors as they grow. The E N. Amer. skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus, of the arum family) has large fleshy leaves, purple-brown spathes, and a skunklike odor. The western, or yellow, skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanum), also an arum, bears a large yellow spathe and is found from California to Alaska and eastward to Montana. The third species, Veratrum californicum, is the poisonous corn lily, or false hellebore, of the lily family, which grows from New Mexico and Baja California northward to Washington State.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Skunk Skunk, n. [Contr. from the Abenaki (American Indian) seganku.] (Zo["o]l.) Any one of several species of American musteline carnivores of the genus Mephitis and allied genera. They have two glands near the anus, secreting an extremely fetid liquid, which the animal ejects at pleasure as a means of defense. Note: The common species of the Eastern United States (Mephitis mephitica) is black with more or less white on the body and tail. The spotted skunk (Spilogale putorius), native of the Southwestern United States and Mexico, is smaller than the common skunk, and is variously marked with black and white. Skunk bird, Skunk blackbird (Zo["o]l.), the bobolink; -- so called because the male, in the breeding season, is black and white, like a skunk. Skunk cabbage (Bot.), an American aroid herb (Symplocarpus f[oe]tidus>) having a reddish hornlike spathe in earliest spring, followed by a cluster of large cabbagelike leaves. It exhales a disagreeable odor. Also called swamp cabbage. Skunk porpoise. (Zo["o]l.) See under Porpoise.