I've been playing, but so far, it's a pretty big mess. I need to spend more time with the manual and practicing on a sphere before I'll get anything useful. 

One thing I've noticed is that, at least on the sphere, the follicles seem to favor a single direction. So, on one side of the sphere they will naturally wilt, but on the other, they seem to start upward before gravity takes effect. I realize that is related to the root stiffness, but I don't understand why it doesn't start off perpendicular to the tangent. Is it just a shortcut that Poser uses that happens to sometimes have a direction that is baked in on the lean of the root, or is there another setting I'm not using properly?