Mystery plant

Since the ground no longer wears a blanket of white, I can now spot plants I would have missed. This, of course, is a mixed blessing. One of the easy ways to identify flora is to look at the flower, but in winter, you don't have floral characteristics to work with, so you're reduced to working with leaves and other things. This revealed species, whose leaves are soft, gray, pointed, and definitely hardy, seems like it ought to be an easy call, but try as I might, using my own library of field guides and a bunch of internet botany sites, I got nowhere. An email with this picture that I sent to two botanists didn't yield an ID either. "You'll need to wait until the plant flowers," I was told. "Be patient." Fortunately, I'm quite skilled at playing the patience game... and I love a good mystery.