The Ashley reservoir is now one of my go-to places to take people when they visit. I took my old college friend and her husband there, and learned that the water-loving plant that I had thought looked very mangrove-y is buttonbush (
Cephalanthus occidentalis), which grows up and down the Atlantic coast and as far inland as the Mississippi, and is indeed a species in the mangrove biome!
Buttonbush

Yesterday I took
osprey_archer there (and we read aloud to each other--so much fun), and lo and behold, the buttonbush was in bloom! I didn't have a camera, so she obliged me with a photo:
Buttonbush in flower, by
osprey_archer
The flowers look like how pollen looks under a scanning electron microscope:
Buttonbush flowers....

Pollen, much magnified:

(
source)
Or, um... like an influenza virus...

(
source)
It smells nice, though, and bees and butterflies love it. AS DO I.
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Thank you!