I have always noticed the Skunk Cabbage in Glen Providence Park, but only this year did I learn how remarkable these plants are.

Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is native to eastern North America. It grows in soft wetland soils- you can find it growing in the wetlands along Broomall’s Run throughout the park. It flowers in late winter and early spring, when only the flowers and their protective covering are visible above the mud. The stems remain buried below the surface of the soil with the large, cabbage-like leaves emerging later.

We found it emerging in the park on a bitterly cold day this January. How does it bloom in such cold conditions? Amazingly, Skunk Cabbage can generate temperatures of up to 15-35°C above air temperature: it literally melts its way through frozen ground, ice and snow. The heat it produces may help to spread its odor in the air, attracting early-emerging pollinating insects.

Skunk Cabbage gets its name from the pungent odor produced by breaking or tearing a leaf.  This odor attracts its pollinators: scavenging flies, stoneflies, and bees.  Its intriguing flowers are tiny, covering a yellow-green spadix, and are protected by an eggplant-like shell called a spathe.  

In the 19th century the U.S. Pharmacopoeia listed Eastern Skunk Cabbage as the drug “dracontium“. It was used in the treatment of respiratory diseases, nervous disorders, rheumatism, and dropsy. It is not considered edible raw, because the roots are toxic and the leaves can burn the mouth.  The Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware Indians, are among the Native Americans who used Skunk Cabbage medicinally.  The Okehocking were the local tribe of the Lenni-Lenape who lived along Ridley and Crum Creeks, and they could have used Skunk Cabbage along Broomall’s Run.  

The documented uses of Skunk Cabbage by the Delaware Indians are:

– Poultice of crushed leaves applied for pain
– Small portions of leaves chewed for epilepsy
– Infusion of roots used for whooping cough
– Infusion of leaves taken as a cold medicine

Not bad for one plant!  You can follow the plant’s stages in our photo gallery below.  The first image was taken in January, but the rest were taken yesterday- so you can see multiple stages of this intriguing plant during one visit to Glen Providence Park.

Perhaps I should let Henry David Thoreau have the last word:  “If you are afflicted with melancholy at this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk-cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year…There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead.”

For more fun facts about Skunk Cabbage, read this entertaining article on TheNaturalCapital.com.

Information from wikipedia unless otherwise linked.

In 2002, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission determined that Glen Providence Park is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places!  This is the official list of the Nation’s historic places determined worthy of preservation.  As Friends of Glen Providence Park, we could not agree more that this park is worthy of preservation!

In 2001, a Historic Resource Survey of Glen Providence Park was conducted, including a map of the proposed National Register Boundary.  The report recounts George and Eleanor Butler’s donation of the land as a Bird Sanctuary and Arboretum, and discusses recreation, culture and landscaping, including the trails, fishing, night-time skating, outdoor concerts and the park’s historic setting.

The report concludes: “The park is a good example of a community park, created from donated land, and then improved upon by the WPA… Glen Providence Park embodies the characteristics of an early twentieth-century community park…  The park has retained its integrity of design, and is recommended eligible for listing in the National Register.”  The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission agreed, and determined Glen Providence Park to be eligible.  We linked the report, the proposed National Registry Boundary, and the determination letter below.

What is the next step?  It seems that Delaware County (the owner of the park) was never notified back in 2002 when this determination was made, so getting listed on the National Register of Historic Places was never pursued.  We came across the determination letter when we reviewed the Bridge/Dam documents on the Media Borough website last year, and we have been sharing this information ever since.  And we are happy to say that we are now working with the County to investigate attaining National Historic Register status!

What else around Media is on the National Register of Historic Places?  Here is what is listed on the National Park Service website:

Dr. Samuel D. Risley House (in Media!)
Media Armory
Old Rose Tree Tavern
Ridley Creek State Park

Intriguingly, a little further away, the Okehocking Indian Land Grant Historic District in Willistown is also listed- of course we are researching the history of the Okehocking in our area!

We would be proud to have Glen Providence Park join the company of these historic places on the National Register!

You can look at these Glen Providence Park documents yourself:

– Historic Resource Survey of Glen Providence Park

– map of the proposed National Register Boundary within Glen Providence Park

– National Historic Register eligibility – determined by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Each of these documents is also posted on the Media Borough website, under the PA Dept of Transportation Section 2002 Evaluation.

William Penn sailed up the Delaware River for the first time on the Welcome on October 28, 1682: 62 years after the Mayflower reached Plymouth.  Penn landed in Upland (now Chester), and would travel the countryside and visit the Native Americans in their lodges, “purchasing” from them the land he had been granted by England’s King Charles II in 1681.  Penn was not the first European in Delaware County- the Native Americans had been fur trading with the Dutch and Swedes since 1643.

Penn had peaceful intentions and signed a Treaty of Friendship with Lenni Lenape Chief Tamanend.  But the settlers did not waste time staking out their new territory, as reflected in the property lines on the Map of the Province of Pennsylvania – begun in 1681.  Of course this would ultimately drive out the Native Americans who had been living here for millennia.

But what was it like here before the settlers?  While we don’t have specific information about Native Americans in Glen Providence Park, we do have an account of their history along Ridley and Crum Creeks from Jane Levis Carter’s book The Down River People of the Lenni Lenape Indians.  The park lies between Ridley and Crum Creeks, and its brook Broomall’s Run is a tributary to Ridley Creek.

Paleo Indians

Around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago, nomadic hunters known as Paleo Indians came to Pennsylvania.  With club and spear they hunted mammoth, moose, caribou and smaller game like Siberian lemming and snowshoe rabbits. They seem to have vanished around 9,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacial period.

Archaic Indians

Around 9,000 years ago the Archaic Indians arrived, hunting deer and other game.  They were skilled at spear fishing, and their diet included clams, berries and nuts, with acorns ground into flour and cooked as gruel.  There was a transitional period 5,000 years ago when they moved to more fixed abodes, developing clay pottery, and expanding their fishing methods with fish hooks, brush nets and stone weirs.

Witch hazel branches are said to have been used by Native Americans as dowsing rods

Lenni Lenape

Woodland Indians were direct descendants of the Archaic Indians, dating from around 3,000 years ago.  Europeans called them Delaware, after Sir Thomas West, Lord de la Warr.  But these people called themselves the Lenni Lenape, the Real or Original People.  Other tribes called them the Grandfather People, out of respect.  Their range was New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The Lenni Lenape were part of a social and language family known as Algonkian- an ancient race of nomad hunters, skilled in pursuit of deer, elk and caribou.  They cleared trees for agriculture, with early crops including tobacco, sunflowers for oil and dye, and corn.

“remedy for pain was the root of the common wood violet”

Okehocking

The Unami, or Down River People, were one of three Lenni Lenape tribes.  The clan of Unami who lived along the Ridley and Crum Creek watersheds became known as the Okehocking, whose heraldic emblem was the turtle, or Pakoango.  They had pumpkin plantations: the name Okehocking seems to be derived from mokahoki, or “people of the pumpkin place.”

About 1,200 years ago they began to use the bow & arrow.  Their crops of corn, beans and squash were termed the Three Sisters, and were staples in the diets of Native Americans and later settlers.  And the Okehocking would know how to utilize the park’s native plants, as depicted along the right.

The Okehocking knew the Mayapple’s root to be poisonous

The Okehocking would have used the Minquas Path, which crossed Ridley Creek two miles south of Glen Providence Park, near the Old Mill in Rose Valley.  This was a trading route used by the Susquehannock Indians, who were called Minquas by the Lenni Lenape.

While the Okehocking were primarily peaceful, they had notorious altercations with Nathaniel Newlin over the damming of creek waters.  In 1702, a group of settlers including Newlin removed the Okehockings from the banks of the Ridley and Crum Creeks to a new reservation in Willistown.  The Ockehocking remained for about a generation, and abandoned the reservation in 1737.  Part of that land is the Okehocking Preserve today.   This may have been the first Indian reservation in the country.

“Sassafras root, winauk, was a common spring tonic”

With the Okehocking Reservation five miles up Ridley Creek, the Minquas Trail two miles down Ridley Creek from Glen Providence Park, and the Lenape documented at the nearby Tyler Arboretum, we can imagine the Okehocking could have known Broomall’s Run where the park is situated.  We just wish we knew what they called it!

Where did they go?

Conventional histories of Pennsylvania indicate that the Lenape people left the state by the beginning of the 19th century.  Many Lenape were driven westward, and ultimately created communities in Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and beyond.

While all parts of Pokeberry are toxic, Okehocking knew how to safely prepare “pigeonberry” or “poke” shoot

But according to the Lenape Nation website: “…some Lenape people remained here in secret. Children of the little known Lenape-European marriages of the 1700s stayed on the Lenape homelands and continued to practice their traditions covertly. Hiding their heritage, they avoided discovery by both the government and their neighbors for more than two hundred years. Now, the descendants of these people have come forward to tell their story.”

Unless otherwise noted or linked, information is from the 1976 book The Down River People of the Lenni Lenape Indians by Jane Levis Carter, Mark One Printing, Philadelphia.

Benjamin West's painting (in 1771) of William Penn's 1682 treaty with the Lenape