Riverside Plants 
thought at first, but have a slight spiral twist to them— 
a little natural touch to which much of the varied beauty 
of a cat-tail swamp is due. The dark brown “tails” which 
peep out from amid the green leaves here and there all 
over the marsh are compact seed masses, as you will surely 
learn if you bring some home and stand them in a vase or 
in the hall corner, as many are wont to do. By and bye 
the brown mass splits and the seeds, each in its long cotton 
robe, fluff out and float about the house, to the great an¬ 
noyance of the neat housewife. The flowering of the cat¬ 
tail is in June, and those who desire a store of the decora¬ 
tive material for their apartment do well to gather it very 
early in the summer, before the seeds have matured. 
They then remain fixed in the club-like heads not alone 
for one winter but for many. 
The great bulrush, which grows in similar situations 
to the cat-tail and is sometimes eight or nine feet tall, is 
another interesting plant of the waterways. We shall 
find it in bloom now, a loose cluster of small brownish 
balls at the pointed summit of the round leafless stems. 
The blossom used to be another source of food supply to 
some tribes of Indians, who would beat the pollen off on 
a cloth and make the collected meal into cakes. The princi¬ 
pal use of the bulrush, however, both to uncivilized and to 
civilized men, is derived from its spongy stems, which may 
be woven into excellent mats and baskets. Shakespeare 
devotees who visit Stratford-on-Avon may to this day see 
laborers cutting these rushes out of the waters of the 
classic stream and spreading them on the green banks in 
regular swaths to dry. 
[81] 
