cottonwood

Questions are coming into OSU Extension offices about masses of white, cottony, fiber wafting through Ohio’s forests and landscapes. Charles “Chuck” Behnke, retired OSU Extension educator, was known to call the diaphanous fluff “Mother Nature’s navel lint.”

Have you ever experienced this - noticing something for the first time, yet realizing that you must have seen it for years without realizing it was there. That was the experience of a group of plant lovers earlier this spring. Oh, my, what we were missing. Beautiful red flowers, unfamiliar, on a familiar tree.