CAT-TAIL FAMILY 



The blooming period is early summer and the blos- 

 soming spike is a two-story arrangement "as if the 

 tip of Pussy's tail was of a different kind of fur," as 

 indeed it is. The upper part is golden green and seems 

 to be clothed with a fine drooping fringe of yellow which 

 proves to be a mass of crowded anthers with a few 

 attendant hairs. These anthers shed their pollen 

 abundantly and this falls down upon the innumerable 

 pistillate flowers beneath. By late July the stamens 

 have shed all their pollen and shrivelled, they and their 

 hairs have all dropped off, and only a bare brown stem 

 marks the place where they once were. The lower 

 half of the cylindrical spike consists of pistillate florets 

 and they remain intact. It is no light matter to sepa- 

 rate the pistillate florets from the plush of the Cat- 

 tail, they are so crowded and embedded in whitish 

 down. They are without either sepal or petal, the 

 ovary is long, the style slender, and the stigma reaches 

 out to the surface of the velvet cyHnder. It is easier 

 to find the seed, this being very like the flower except 

 that it is a little larger and browner; it is, in fact, the 

 ripened pistil. 



In the wet ditch by the wayside, at the edge of the 

 lake or pond, at the point where land and water meet, 

 one finds in midsummer groups of Cat-tails anywhere 

 and everywhere throughout the Northern States. 



The leaves of the Cat-tail plant are all of the same 

 general shape but vary in length. The free part is 

 long and narrow and flat with a tapering rounded tip; 

 the lower part clasps the stem as well as it can. The 

 leaves generally stand higher than the stiff stem of 

 blossoms or fruit, and a plantation of seedlings sways 

 in the breeze Hke a field of grain. These leaves having 



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