Balls of Cotton

Well I'm back home now but we got to do the coolest thing on the last day in Georgia. We were on the way to the airport and we passed a cotton field with the cotton fluff balls popping out of the little seed pods! I had never actually seen the cotton plant before, especially not with the cotton actually coming out, so we careened off the road and into the cotton field.

It was the coolest thing ever to see the cotton actually coming out of the seed pods! I guess I didn't realize it would actually look like little cottonballs coming out of the pods. It was so soft and fluffy! Now I'm completely confused because I don't understand why a plant would make these cottonballs. What survival value does a fluff ball have for the plant? And then I was told something else really cool...do you know what they do with the cotton after they pick it? They shape it into big cubes of cotton - like hay bales, only cotton bales. It's totally cool!

So that was my Georgia cotton education for the week. Tiny little fluffballs as far as you can see. I want to grow some cotton at my house now! I wonder if it can be grown in Virginia!