After trudging over the blinding, desert-like mountains of sand that compose the first half of Provincetown’s grueling dune shack trail, a hiker then stumbling across the floating, twinkling hairballs of Eriophorum virginicum would be forgiven for thinking they were experiencing some sort of insane mirage. The colony of tawny and its dreamlike constellation of seed heads are indeed real, as is the oasis they live in — a permanent bog in the middle of the dunes. (The elevation here at the trail’s midpoint is so low that the ground is completely saturated by the water table.) The blond hairs of E. virginicum will eventually detach to catch the wind like a dandelion, carrying the seeds away to look for another rare puddle in the sand.
