I was doing some reading today and learned something new. I had known that pineapples were a type of bromeliad. And the grocery stores and nurseries always have such amazing colorful bromeliads for sale. I had read that the Bromeliaceae family has three subfamilies: Pitcairnioideae, Bromeliaceae, and Tillandsioideae with hundreds of species in each. But these hard-to-pronounce terms weren't my new knowledge discovery.
My new discovery was learning that Spanish moss is a type of bromeliad! How about that? I grew up seeing it hanging off trees everywhere, but never in a million years would have guessed it was in the same family with the house plants we're accustomed to seeing in pots. They look SO different! And if that weren't interesting enough, I also learned from wiki that it "Spanish moss shelters a number of creatures, including rat snakes and three species of bats." While I saw many birds use it to make nests, not once did it ever cross my mind that rat snakes and bats took shelter in it. Which reminds me...my oldest daughter LOVES bats. Armed with this information, she'd probably ask me to try to cultivate the Spanish moss on our live oak trees. Freaky! 
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