Fuzzy White

I find some very odd things on my everyday adventures. The plant in this picture is something I've never seen before. Maybe one of you knows exactly what it is, but it is completely odd to me. This is the kind of thing that makes an adventure fun. Discovering something new.

This plant is in a very wet area. The whole place is like a big swampy pond. As a matter of fact, it is in the same area where I came upon the hundreds of ducks I showed you a few days ago. I was looking at this plant right before I reached the area where the ducks live.

When I first saw this, I thought it was some sort of strange pine cone. The plant doesn't look like any kind of pine tree to me though, so I'm sure that's wrong. Maybe it's a kind of pod or something. I didn't know it until I looked at the pictures, but the white color is from the fuzz that is growing on it. Underneath that fuzz it is green.

I would have picked one and took it home and cut it open or something, but I always worry that an unfamiliar plant might not be so good to touch. Who knows? Those little white hairs on this plant might be sharp and poke right into my skin or something. That would not be fun trying to dig them out.

I might just be paranoid about things like that, but at least I'm uninjured. I've done very many foolish things on my nature trails, but my main safety rule is to keep my hands off of unfamiliar things. Last winter I was caught in a freak winter storm where I saw a tree fall in front of me on the path, and it only excited me more. But I still won't touch a strange plant.

Here's a more pulled back view of the whole plant. I think it might be a bush of some sort, because it isn't very tall. On the other hand, it is taller than me. It might be a tree that has a lot of close branches. I guess I might learn the identity of this plant one day, but it will be purely by accident. The one thing I know for sure is that I'm not going to touch it.

Thinking about a few comments from yesterday's post, I thought about showing a few pictures of the meadow today, but wider shots just don't show the flowers very well. The taller weeds seem to hide them in the photos I already have. I'll have to go back and try to get a few better shots that include the flowers. Then maybe I can show it to you. I don't touch the flowers either. I guess it's a phobia.