"I examine the skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell*....All that you see is a stout beaked hood just rising above the dead brown grass in the springy ground now, where it has felt the heat, under some south bank. The single enveloping leaf, or "spathe," is all the flower that you see commonly, and those are as variously colored as tulips and of similar color, -- from a very dark almost black mahogany to a light yellow streaked or freckled with mahogany...."
Journal, March 16, 1860.