Day 288: I don't think I will ever be able to think of Sparganium emersum without remembering how Arnie led me through the rushes and into a bog, not realizing that there was a trail only a few feet away. As we made our way out to the plant he was intending to show me, I took a mis-step and wound up sunk to the hips in mud while he perched on a log, laughing and taking photos for posterity. The Sparganium was a bonus. Even though it is a much larger plant than the one we were trying to identify, he'd completely overlooked it.
That's the way it works. Obviously, when you're looking at the broad overview, you stand a good chance of missing small details, but the converse is also true. Once you have attuned your eye to search for flowers only a few millimeters in diameter, your mind tends to dismiss larger subjects as unimportant. Once I've zeroed in on something and have set my visual and mental scanners to detect it, I could walk right by an elephant and not notice it was there.
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