Cattails Open To Let Seeds Fly Through The Wind During Autumn Stock Image

Many parts of the Typha plant are edible to humans. Typha are aquatic or semi-aquatic, rhizomatous, herbaceous perennial plants. The plants are monoecious, with unisexual flowers that develop in dense racemes. The numerous male flowers form a narrow spike at the top of the vertical stem. Each male staminate flower is reduced to a pair of stamens and hairs, and withers once the pollen is shed. Large numbers of tiny female flowers form a dense, sausage-shaped spike on the stem below the male spike. The seeds are minute long, and attached to fine hairs. When ripe, the heads disintegrate into a cottony fluff from which the seeds disperse by wind.