Nature Bulletin No. 145   March 6, 1948
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
William N. Erickson, President
Roberts Mann, Supt. of Conservation

****:CAT-TAILS

One of the first signs of spring, as the snow and ice melt away, is the 
appearance of new green spears of cat-tail leaves pushing up through 
the mud and water along the shores of lakes and ponds, and in the 
shallows of swamps and marshes. Frequently, shallow waters are 
completely choked with cat-tails which, by summer, grow to be tall 
graceful plants providing favorite nesting places for red-winged 
blackbirds and for bitterns, coots and other shore birds. The cat-tail is 
also a prefer red food and house-building material for mushrats, who 
cut and pile great heaps of them with other aquatic plants and mud, into 
lodges where they spend the winter, or to which they go by underwater 
channels to feed.

Each cat-tail plant has a rod-like blossom-stalk, 4 to 8 feet tall, rising 
from a clump of fine fibrous roots bedded in the mud. This stalk is 
enclosed and supported by the lower portions of the tall narrow tapering 
leaves -- their upper portions flat, flexible, and curving gracefully. The 
stalk is topped by a cylindrical head about a foot long. In June and early 
July, the lower half of this head which contains thousands of female 
flowers, is about an inch in diameter and looks like green velvet. The 
upper half, more slender and covered with olive-green fuzz, contains 
the pollen-bearing male flowers. By September, the lower half is a deep 
brown plush-like cylinder packed with thousands of seeds which later 
separate from the head and are blown away, each borne by its fluffy 
parachute.

For ages, artists and decorators have used the cat-tail as a model for 
their designs. The central part of the root and lower stalk, which is 
mainly starch, was dried and ground into meal by several tribes of 
Indians and by the early white settlers. The white tender lower parts of 
the stem and leaves may be eaten in salads. The cat-tail leaves are used 
for weaving, for caulking seams in boats, and for caulking between the 
staves of barrels. The stalk heads, or "cat tails", are edible if roasted 
when young; when mature and dry they can be dipped in oil and used 
for torches; during the last war they were processed to substitute for 
Kapok in life preservers and mattresses.

Manx cats have no tails.