38 
LITTLE WANDERERS. 
1 5 
kinds are on the same plant. If you look at a cattail 
in its green stage, you will easily find the staminate 
flowers growing at the very top of the stalk, — at 
A in the picture. Out of these staminate flowers 
you can shake clouds of yellow pollen. Below the 
staminate flowers at B are the pistillate flowers, 
very small and packed very closely together. 
Each one has a seed pod at its base, and each 
seed pod when ripe has a tiny plume. 
Of course the seed pods fly away on the wings 
of the wind. Being so small and light, they are 
sometimes carried a long distance. 
A good many, no doubt, are so unfortunate as to fall 
on dry ground, and that 
is the end of them. 
But others fall in 
swamps and ditches, 
where they grow vigor- 
ously and often fill up 
the swamp or the ditch 
so that it becomes a bed 
of cattails. 
The downy cattail seeds 
are gathered in some 
places and made into 
mattresses for people to 
Cattails with ripe seeds. Sleep OU. 
