Beginner Gardening: White stuff on my plant, 1 by teainthegarden

teainthegarden wrote:
Hello,
I can't remember what was planted (friends filled my garden with perennials last fall but I didn't label them all) and today I saw this white stuff on it. It had old woody stems that also had this white stuff on it, but I cut those off and threw them away before this picture was taken. This looks like the same substance that was inside, the woody stems (I think) but I don't know how it would have ended up scattered around the plant like this (it was scattered before I cut them).
Any thoughts?
Thanks for your help!