“Skunk cabbage!” shouted a passer by as I stood in the mud at the edge of a pond.

‘Bit rude,’ I thought.

But then I googled it, and he was dead right – about the plant.

American skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, is an invasive non-native species of plant. It’s been banned for sale in the UK, not because of its smell (it stinks of skunks, apparently), but because it bullies and defeats our own wetland flora.

Photographed here in the grounds of @keeleuniversity, I quite like its sculpted exotic looks.

Worth getting muddy for, but I hope the grounds staff at Keele University are keeping the plant under control. Yeah?