This lifeform is generally found west of the Continental Divide in North America The yellow color will help identify this lifeform. This lifeform is found in swamps or very moist ground. This lifeform is locally common in suitable environments.

Yellow Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanum) is found in swampy areas from Alaska south to California, and east to Montana and Idaho. This unusual plant can be up to three feet tall. Its leaves can be up to two feet long.

Lysichiton genus (skunk cabbage) is native to western North America and the Orient.  There are two species in this genus.  These perennial herbs forms clumps. One species is found in North America.  (Some scientists maintain that the Oriental species is the same species as the one in the western United States.)

Arums (Family Araceae) are found worldwide primarily in the tropics. North America, however, has several species in this family including the Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Skunk Cabbage.

Arums (Family Araceae) are found worldwide primarily in the tropics. This family has almost 3,000 species organized into over 100 genera. The family is not very important from an economic viewpoint. While the roots of Colocasia (taro) and Alocasia are eaten, and the fruits of Monstera are also eaten, many of the genera are used as ornamentals, such as Dieffenbachia, Philodendron, and Anthurium. There are 47 species in 25 different genera growing in greater North America.

Order Spathiflorae is composed of two families: the Arum family and the Duckweed  family.

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.