Skunk cabbage blooming in the wild in West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

In a ravine alongside a stream just north of the Horticultural Center, Wednesday February 21st 2024. Oddly mimicking the Skunk Cabbage flower in the picture above is a piece of a crashed and burned automobile which had scorched the other side of the stream, filled with burned seats and melted metal. A typical scene in Fairmount Park and all over Philly I hardly noticed the carnage.
For at least millennia this stream flowed into the Schuylkill River until the mid twentieth century when the Schuylkill Expressway was built over it filling in a vast portion of the ravine and sending the stream into an often blocked up tunnel. Yet the upper portion of the ravine is intact and has many of the long time flora surviving, including this population of skunk cabbage as well as Mayapple, Redbud and Spring beauty to name just a few.
I will call for it again and will continue to make my demand: The Schuylkill Expressway must be dismantled! It is not inevitable that it will last forever.
From an evolutionary point of view, what advantage does the expressway have over the Skunk Cabbage?

10 years at Susquehanna State Park!


It is our tenth anniversary of visiting Susquehanna State park near Havre de Grace Maryland in September. We walk the trails along the River and enjoy the goldenrod, the Lobelia and the Helianthus. We lunch on Paw Paw if ripe enough. On September 2nd we enjoyed the ‘false fall’ and lapped it up!! We discussed the late summer Melancholy and are thinking about going to a different Maryland/Chesapeake bay location next year to keep things fresh and vibrant.