CAT-TAIL FAMILY 



tall, straight, and stiff, with brown cylindrical spikes at 

 the top and long, grass-like leaves, more or less withered. 

 The stalks sway slightly and the dry leaves rustle in the 

 wind. 



TYPHACE^E CAT-TAIL FAMILY 



Typha latifolia, L. 



Yellow-brown Broad-leaved Cat-tail, Black-cap, 



Great Reed-mace, Bulb-segg, 



June-July Cat-o' -nine-tails, Water-torch, 



Marsh Beetle, Bee bresh, 



Marsh Pestle, Candlewick, 



Cat-tail Flag, Blackamoor. 

 Flax-tail, 



Typha: for derivation see angustifolia. 

 Latifolia: Latin for broad-leaved. 



THE PREFERRED HABITAT: brackish marshes. 



THE PLANT: erect, four feet to eight feet high; the stem 

 stout, hairless. 



THE LEAVES: basal, linear, varying in width from one 

 quarter of an inch to one inch ; without hairs on both sides ; 

 obtusish at the apex; entire; parallel- veined. 



THE FLOWERS: in cylindrical spikes; the upper spike bear- 

 ing the staminate, the lower the pistillate flowers. 



THE FRUIT: minute nutlets; the down very copious. 



Neither this nor the Narrow-leaved Cat-tail is the 

 Bulrush of the Bible as some have erroneously thought. 

 As Mr. Stepp, an English botanist, says: "Of late years 

 it has become the general error to call this plant Bulrush. 

 Every autumn the hawkers in London and other cities 

 offer cylindrical spikes of Typha for sale as an aesthetic 

 decoration and call them bulrushes. But they are not 

 the originators of the blunder. It is the artists who have 



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