Flora's delicate flakes

Seen from afar, the white flakes look like flowers. But it is the infructescence that draws everyone's attention with their long white hair. The actual flowering of the cotton grass in spring is completely unspectacular, hardly noticeable. Of the many types of cotton grass, narrow-leaved cotton grass, sheath cotton grass and Scheuchzer's cotton grass can be found more or less frequently within Ötztal. For us laypeople, the differences are difficult to see. But what we, as hikers, should know in particular: all cotton grasses are warning plants. They point us to wet spots where we could sink in the mud far beyond the edge of our hiking boots if we don't bypass them.

Cotton grass helps shape the alpine landscape. Its long, subterranean, reddish-brown spurs strongly promote the silting up of water bodies. Therefore, cotton grass is also a symbol for the coming and going of water bodies in the mountains. As plants of nutrient-poor wetlands, cotton grass and its entire habitat are very sensitive to interference with the ecosystem. Like all sour grasses, it reacts sensitively to fertilization and drainage, for example to measures that are usually aimed at more intensive agricultural use.

People who lived near bogs or marshes used the plant as a medicine in ancient times. Cotton grass contains bitter substances and tannic acid. According to the traditions of folk medicine, the roots and young shoots of the plant are said to help against diarrhea and are used for general strengthening. Our ancestors were also resourceful when it came to using the woolly seed hairs for domestic practice - they used them to braid candle wicks, for example. Tufts of cotton grass were often used as stuffing material for pillows on alpine pastures. Cotton grass balls are not suitable as a substitute for real wool. But it doesn't matter - in Ötztal and other Alpine valleys, the real wool of mountain sheep is not scarce at all.