Jack-in-the-Pulpit, home

The flowering season of the Skunk Cabbage is long past, but there are plenty of blossoms getting ready to grace the wetlands. One of my favorites is the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, a Skunk Cabbage relative whose unusual flower features a “Jack”—that's the upright organ called a spadix—that sits in a sheath called a spathe. According to the good folks at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, "the spathe looks like an old fashioned pulpit, that curls around the spadix forming an overhanging baffle. Taken together the plant looks like a Sunday-morning preacher ready to relate his sermon to any passing observer." I like this description, which is certainly easier to write about than many of the Jack's other common names, many of them making a reference to the flower's resemblance to human genitalia. I'm just a naturalist and a photographer. I report. I take pictures. I'll leave what the Jack calls to mind to viewers and try to listen to the sermon without, um, distractions.