Cattails | Nature Adventure

Scroll to Learn

Biology

Cattails, also known as simply reeds or their genus name of Typha, are aquatic to semi-aquatic plants that grow along the edges of water. They are usually very tall with narrow, upright leaves and long stalks, where they produce male stamens on the very top of the stem and oval-shaped racemes of flowers below. This is the "corndog" looking part of the cattail, a bunch of little female flowers all clustered together! Once fertilized and ready to disperse, this portion of the cattail disintegrates into stringy, cotton-like puffs, carrying their seeds on the wind.

These plants, though everywhere in North America, are actually an introduced species that likely came from Europe or Eurasia a very, very long time ago. These plants can be extremely hard to get rid of, as they produce so many seeds per stalk, and those seeds are then carried by the wind to places far away from their parent plants. Additionally, their seeds may stay dormant in dry conditions for a long time! This means that they can survive droughts, and may already be in the soil before a permanent body of water has established itself.

But they're not all bad. Many parts of cattails are edible, though some species need to be cooked first to release toxins before people can eat them safely. Additionally, you should never bite into the raw flower body of the cattail! The sudden release of its seeds may choke or suffocate you. But other parts of the plant can be milled into flour or eaten raw, and the flowers can be roasted first to make them safe to eat. Their roots also form a lump that can be can be cooked and eaten like a potato!

Furthermore, people have been building things from cattail reeds for centuries. They may be used today as a more ecofriendly form of insulation in buildings, made into paper, rafts, boats, shoes, pillow stuffing, candles, and can even produce biofuel when processed for their starches!

Ecological Importance

As an invasive species, most ecologists want to remove cattails from vulnerable areas. This is because cattails can out-compete native plants that may be endangered or struggling. But in areas where cattail has become naturalized - that is, where it's been for so long that the environment has adapted around it - cattail reeds provide food and shelter for muskrats, nesting material for waterfowl, and protective cover for animals like birds, turtles, otters, and other small creatures.

Cattails are also one of the first colonizer plants in an environment. These plants are defined as resilient, quick-growing and tolerant of poor nutrition in the soil. They lay down the first layers of vegetation in areas where little to no plant life may be growing, and in addition to that, cattails also draw up toxins like lead and pesticides. This removes those chemicals and elements from the soil, gradually making the nearby water safer to drink.

Finally, the roots of cattail plants reduce soil erosion by forming dense net-like structures in the mud, preventing more soil from being washed away in the water.

Did you know?

Seeds aren't the only way cattails spread!

Cattails can also reproduce by their rhizomes, a part of their root structure that creeps along the ground. New shoots can emerge from this rhizome, creating clones of the original plant that cover a wider area. Even though there may appear to be dozens of individual plants in one space, it may only be a few individual plants when you break it down by genetics!

< Back to the forest