Cattails, of the genus
Typha, are a plant abundant in
wetlands around the world. They are charactarized by their long, thin
grasslike leaves, somewhat large
tubers, and by the '
hot dog' shaped masses of seed borne on tall stems late in the year. Cattails are fast-growing plants which depend on large amounts of
nitrogen to survive. They are charactaristic of most open
marshland around the US. They have also become abundant in other areas, such as
Australia, where they are not native. In these places they are somewhat of a
weed. Cattails can also become weedy in their
natural habitat if too much
fertillizer is dumped into the water. for instance, the
everglades, where once cattails were rare, is now quite overrun with them in places where irrigation runs off of fertillized fields.
the Native Americans used the tubers of these plants as food in certain times of the year. They also sometimes used the 'down' to help start fires. Cattails are pleasant plants, but not useable in an urban landscape unless you have a pond or other permenant source of standing water.