Sorry for potato quality, but it’s soft and fuzzy on the outside, and the inside is somewhat mushy and is a light yellow/green color, and it’s about 2 inches long.
Found under some trees at our city park in South Mississippi.
Edit: I’m now seeing a number of the fuzzy peels laying around one of the picnic tables, so is it some sort of food?
Edit 2: It doesn’t seem to have any notable smell that I can tell.
Edit 3: Solved - Magnolia Flower Bud
We’re actually sitting under a Magnolia tree right now and I just looked up and saw one still on the tree, so this is now 100% confirmed.
Hmm, I just looked those up online, plus just cut this one in half for comparison. Unless what I have just happens to be a not quite ripe pod, I’m not totally sure, but it does contain many many packed separate mini seeds inside, similar color to the outer layer after removing the peel. The inside ends of the mini seeds where they attach to the core is red.
Given that there are cooking recipes for milkweed pods, I went ahead and tasted one of the micro seeds (which measure about 15mm long and about 2mm wide), and honestly it tasted about like pine sap, and the inside smells very green.
Perhaps its an unripened milkweed pod, or perhaps it’s something else, I dunno. But I’ll tell ya this much, I ain’t in any hurry to eat it.