‘466 P. W. CLAASSEN 
North. Typha angustifolia grows abundantly in the marshes along the 
Atlantic Coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, as well as inland and even 
in California. 
GROWTH HABIT AND REPRODUCTION 
Cat-tails are marsh or aquatic plants, with creeping rootstocks, fibrous™ 
roots, and glabrous, erect stems. They are perennial plants, the rootstocks 
remaining alive while the stem dies down to the ground every year. 
The following spring these rootstocks, or rhizomes, send up the new plants. 
Plants which attain only partial growth during the season keep the center 
alive that winter and probably reach maturity the following summer. The 
rhizomes spread in every direction and within a few years a large group 
of cat-tails results from the offsets of a single plant. It is really very 
difficult to define the limits of a single plant, since they are so linked 
together by these underground rhizomes (Plate XLV, 56). <A two-years 
growth of a plant, with the connecting rhizome and the offset which will 
form the next season’s stalk, is shown in Plate XL, 18. 
Aside from the vegetative mode of increase, Typha produces a great 
number of seeds each year. These seeds are provided with pappus, 
which carries them far abroad and insures seeding in all possible situations. 
In The Book of Nature Study (Farmer, 1902-10), the following statement 
occurs: ‘‘ When they [the fruits] become detached from the spike, the 
hairs borne by the stalk of each fruit act as wings to disperse the seed; 
the hairs fluff out into downy masses, so that the whole spike looks about 
a hundred times as large, for a single head will contain a quarter of a 
million of these flying seeds, according to Professor Lloyd Praeger’s 
estimate.” . 
In order to determine somewhat accurately the number of seeds produced 
by one head of Typha latifolia, the number of seeds in four dry, mature 
heads was determined. For this work an analytical balance was employed. 
The procedure was as follows: First, each head was weighed entire; then 
a small bunch of the seeds was detached and weighed, after which the 
number of seeds in this bunch was counted; finally, all the seeds were 
removed and the rachis alone was weighed. From the figures so obtained, 
the number of seeds in each of the heads was computed (table 1), and the 
number of seeds in the average Typha head was found to approximate 
250,000. 
