CATTAILS.
Cattails in
bloom.
Cattail seeds fly, too! It is surprising to know that cattails blossom. But they do.
In the early spring, cattails look green instead of brown, and the thickened green part near the top is made of very, very small flowers packed tightly together.
The brown velvety part of the cattail succeeds the green flowers, and is but a collection of tiny seed pods that fluff out with tiny plumes in the autumn.
There are two kinds of flowers in cattails, as there are in willows, only in the cattails the two 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.
Cattails with ripe
seeds.
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 vigorously 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 sleep on.