Wishes to the Wind, Arctic Bay, Nunavut, Canada
Photograph by Edward Qaqqasiq
An Inuit woman from Canada’s isolated High Arctic on Baffin Island blows her wishes to the wind with Arctic Cottongrass.
The most widespread flowering plant in the northern hemipsphere and Arctic tundra, the Arctic Cottongrass bears a single white wooly seed head. While it looks like grass, Arctic Cottongrass is actually a member of the sedge family. The puffy white cotton growing from the seed head has been used by the Inuit as wicks in oil lamps
