A laboratory exercise is presented in which students determine where metabolic heat is primarily generated in blooming eastern skunk cabbage ("Symplocarpus foetidus") plants. Students consider how color, shape, and orientation of spathes, and stage of flower maturation, may affect metabolic heat production and retention of both metabolic and solar heat, and determine whether the production of heat and odor are correlated. They discuss their results in terms of both physiological mechanisms and adaptive functions of heat production. (Contains 5 figures and 2 tables.)