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Reference

Compendium

Ingredients for spellwork: their formal and folk names, categories, deities and forms, with the sources behind them.

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    313 ingredients

    313 ingredients

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    Botanical Name
    Symplocarpus foetidus

    Skunk Cabbage

    Skunk cabbage is a low-growing plant of the arum family, native to the wetlands and damp hill slopes of eastern North America, from Nova Scotia across to Manitoba and south to Tennessee and North Carolina. It rises from a thick rhizome, and early in spring, often while snow and ice still lie, it sends up a spathe, yellowish green when young and smeared with purple as it ages, around a spadix that carries the flowers. The spadix makes its own heat, enough to melt a way up through frozen ground. Bruised, the plant gives off the rank smell that names it, and that carrion-like smell draws the blowflies that pollinate it. Many Native American peoples used it as a medicine, a seasoning and a talisman, the Winnebago and Dakota among them to loosen phlegm in asthma, and from 1820 to 1882 it was sold in pharmacy as the drug dracontium. Grieve calls it antispasmodic, expectorant and narcotic, tried for asthma, catarrh, rheumatism and dropsy, and counts the seeds stronger than the root. Cunningham makes it a feminine herb of Saturn and water whose power is legal matters: a little of it wrapped in a bay leaf on a Sunday makes a talisman that draws good fortune, and it is said to help in court cases.

    Caution

    AHPA places skunk cabbage in safety class 2d (specific use restrictions apply) and interaction class A (no clinically relevant drug interactions expected). Do not exceed the recommended dose, and anyone with a history of kidney stones should use it with caution. Large doses have been linked with nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness and dimmed vision. The plant holds needle-like calcium oxalate crystals that burn the lips and mouth when eaten and can bring swelling, blistering, hoarseness and difficulty swallowing. Its safety in pregnancy and while nursing has not been established. Cunningham's health code says not to take it internally if you have kidney stones.

    Forms

    • Root
    • Seed

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Water
    Celestial Bodies
    Saturn

    Folk Names

    • Clumpfoot Cabbage
    • Eastern Skunk Cabbage
    • Foetid Pothos
    • Meadow Cabbage
    • Polecat Weed
    • Skunk Weed
    • Suntull
    • Swamp Cabbage

    Categories

    • Legal Matters
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