Broad-Leaved Cat-Tail

Typha latifolia

We have examined several species which have microscopic flowers, notably flowering spurge and jack-in-the-pulpits.  Cat-tails are another kind of plant with microscopic flowers.  That brown sausage borne at the top of the stalk is actually an inflorescence tightly packed with hundreds to thousands of minute female flowers.  The male flowers are also minute and are packed into a spike that sits above the female spike.  Thus the male and female parts of these plants are separated into different flowers on different parts of the plant, but each plant has both kinds of flowers.  The female sausage starts off green but becomes brown as the flowers mature.  The male spike turns golden yellow as it produces huge amounts of pollen that blow away on the winds.  Once the pollen has been released the male flowers die and the male spike withers, as in the picture at the bottom.  If pollen should blow onto a female flower of another cat-tail plant, the sperm within the pollen will fertilize an egg within the female flower.  The fertilized egg develops into a seed which develops a number of tiny hairs, or fluff.  In the fall, the female spike will disintegrate and the seeds will blow away in the wind, using their fluff for parachutes.  If the seeds land on wet soil or in shallow water, they will germinate and produce a new cat-tail plant.  It is great fun for children to squeeze a ripe cat-tail stalk, as the solid brown sausage will erupt into fluffy seeds that take off on the breezes.

All cat-tails are plants of shallow water in sunny areas.  They live in marshes, and along the shallow edges of ponds.  They can be annoying weeds of such artificial wetlands as irrigation ditches, rice paddies, and farm ponds.  On the other hand, people who attempt to create naturalistic wetlands artificially are usually pleased when cat-tails move into their wetlands by themselves.  Cat-tails have begun to grow in the Radford University storm water drainage wetland, for example. 

There are only about a dozen species of cat-tails in the world, and only three in North America.  Broad-leaved cat-tail is the most common one inland.  It can be found from Newfoundland west to Alaska, south to Mexico, east to Florida, and also in Central America, South America, Eurasia and Africa.  It is an introduced weed in Tasmania, Australia.  Narrow-leaved cat-tail, T. angustifolia, is similar to broad-leaved cat-tail, except that the leaves are narrower, and the male and female flower spikes are separated by several inches of naked stalk.  Narrow-leaved cat-tail is common on the coastal plane, and rare, but not unknown, inland.  It is found mostly north of us.  A third species, southern cat-tail, T. domingensis, is common in the deep south, and known in Virginia only in the far southeast.  It is very similar to narrow-leaved cat-tail.

All cat-tail species are fairly similar, differing somewhat in the size of the leaves and in the distance between male and female spikes.  There are also microscopic differences important to botanists, but of little interest to most people.  To make matters worse, all three North American species hybridize with each other promiscuously to produce plants intermediate between the parents.  Most, but apparently, not all of these hybrids are sterile and produce no viable seeds; however, they can still reproduce from the roots.  In some areas, the hybrid between narrow-leaved and broad-leaved cat-tails is a noxious weed in farm ponds and irrigation ditches.

Cat-tails are been one of the most useful plants to people one can imagine.  The leaves have been dried and woven together to produce baskets, mats, chair seats, and roofs.  The fluff from fruiting plants has been used to stuff pillows, quilts, mattresses, and life preservers.  Stuffed into diapers, the fluff produces a primitive version of Pampers.  The fluff is also very flammable and makes excellent tinder.  The young shoots, the buds on the roots, and the immature flower heads are all edible.  The roots have been dried and ground for flour, and the copious pollen produced by the male flowers has been collected, dried and used as a flour also.

Cat-tails are so unusual they are placed in a family by themselves, the Typhaceae or Cat-Tail Family, which contains only the genus Typha with its dozen or so species.  The genus name comes from tuphe, the Greek name for cat-tail plants.  It may be related to the Greek typhein, "to produce smoke."  In the Flora of North America, S. Galen Smith suggests that the relationship may be from the smoky brown color of the flower spikes, or from the usefulness of the dried spikes for keeping smoky fires burning.  Personally, I would guess that the relationship comes from the way the fruiting spikes dissolve into smoke-like fluff that drifts away on the wind.

Look for cat-tails in the wetlands at the entrance to Wildwood and at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.  Right now the female flowers are brown but maturing, and the male flowers are withered.  Watch for the fluff produced later in the fall.  Next spring watch for the new male flowers to turn golden yellow with pollen.

GGC