MYSTERY: Looks familiar, but where?

The dappled light dances along this green tunnel of foliage over a sandy path. It’s in Charleston County, but where? Send your guesses to editor@charlestoncurrents.com to win baseball tickets — and make sure to include your contact information and hometown.

Last week’s mystery: Public relations maven Cheryl Smithem of Folly Beach was first to identify last week’s mystery flower as cockscomb or crested celosia. “My mother always grew lots of them,” she wrote.

Marcia Rosenberg of Mount Pleasant recalled that she grew three different colors of the flower a few years ago with great success, but tried the following year and got no blooms. Kathy Woolsey of James island writes that cockscomb and Love Lies Bleeding, both pictured in the last issue, are in the same family, Amaranthaceae. “They can be difficult to grow here in the Lowcountry because bugs devour the foliage.”

Laura Morris of Mount Pleasant was among several who identified the flower via our Facebook page. She noted the plant is “from East Africa where it was the most common vegetable and a staple in the diet of many of the slaves that were brought here for the expertise in growing rice. It was grown here in Charleston frequently as an ornamental, a healthy green vegetable, and a medicinal. It is a celosia, and I can provide personal testimony that it does wonders for dry eye.”

Others who correctly spotted the flower, called “velvet flower” by some, included Judy Carberry and Carol Ann Smalley of Charleston; Chris Brooks and April Gordon of Mount Pleasant; Kimberly LeGere of Summerville; Shelby Vargo of North Charleston; and Sharra Klug of Charlottesville, Va. — right down the road from where we took the picture. Thanks all!

• If you have a picture with which you’d like to stump our readers, send it along to editor@charlestoncurrents.com.