noun

• A tall, reedlike marsh plant with a dark brown, velvety cylindrical head of numerous tiny flowers.

  Also called reed mace, bulrush

  Genus Typha, family Typhaceae: several species, in particular the common cattail (T. latifolia)

  ‘Plants like cattails, bulrushes, jewelweed, and the lovely cardinal flower do best with alternating wet and dry periods, and survive flooding as long as most of the leaves are out of the water.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The herbaceous vegetation would have been rich and diverse, including, for example, cattail, buttonbush, numerous sedges, grasses and rushes, and bushy willows and alder.’
  • ‘By repeatedly removing the leaves on cattail plants, the food supply in the underground tuber will be depleted and the plant will eventually die.’
  • ‘The nest was surrounded by cattails and was constructed of year-old cattail leaves and stems.’
  • ‘Like beavers, muskrats build lodges out of sticks, twigs, cattails and bulrushes, reinforcing them with mud.’