From an online encyclopedia (looks like you'll need to wait a couple of centuries and plug your nose if disking it). It's also a protected plant in Tennessee:
Its name is derived from its odor, which is rather mild as long as the plant remains intact. To fully appreciate why the plant is so named, one need only tear off a fresh leaf, releasing a pungent odor. While not considered edible, the plant is not poisonous to the touch. Though unpleasant, the smell is not harmful. The foul odor attracts its pollinators, scavenging flies, stoneflies, and bees. The odor in the leaves may also serve to discourage large animals from disturbing or damaging this plant which grows in soft wetland soils.
Eastern Skunk Cabbage has contractile roots which contract after growing into the earth. This pulls the stem of the plant deeper into the mud, so that the plant in effect grows downward, not upward. Each year, the plant grows deeper into the earth, so that older plants are practically impossible to dig up. It is thought possible that it may be able to live for hundreds of years. They reproduce by hard, pea-sized seeds which fall in the mud and are carried away by animals or by floods.
