It’s always astonished me that Spanish moss – that dreary, droopy stuff that festoons old Southern landscapes — is related to pineapples. But it’s true. They’re both bromeliads, an ancient group of plants that includes a number of epiphytic species that don’t need to be rooted in soil to thrive. What these two very different-seeming plants do have in common is an exterior armor of overlapping plates. In the pineapple, it’s obvious. The skin is segmented with regularly incised scales. On the moss, it’s more subtle, but with a hand lens, it’s plain. Each silvery tendril of Spanish moss is covered with a mosaic of interlocking scales, like a butterfly’s wing.