After 15 years I still come across stuff in the desert that I've never seen before. A couple of weeks ago I saw what looked like the stuffing out of a child's stuffed toy. I was close to a road, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation. I saw a couple more patches of the cottony stuff further from the road, though, and also noticed that it was just around Harvester ant mounds. I also noticed some ants carrying the stuff. I couldn't figure out where it came from, though. Were the ants doing their spring cleaning and this was garbage that had collected in the mounds all winter?
Scenic area
Closeup of agave flowers on a stalk that fell over.
The sun had set by the time I returned to the truck. I got a little too close to an ocotillo and it caught my sleeve. I kept walking and when the ocotillo finally snapped free, I was showered with seeds. The seeds are wrapped in a thin white skin and have a fibrous, cottony layer between the skin and the seed itself. The ants had been gathering the seeds (which is what Harvester ants do) and stripping off and discarding the inedible fibers around the seed.
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