Growing Home: Cattail Plants... Overachiever or Purposeful?

That brown “hot dog” on a cattail plant is actually thousands of tightly packed female flowers. Above it grows a separate male flower spike that releases pollen, then withers away. By fall, the brown head is packed with tiny seeds, attached to silky hairs. When the cattail head breaks apart, those hairs fluff up and carry seeds on the wind. Underground, cattail rhizomes spread sideways producing colonies of connected plants. Add nutrient-rich water and cattails can become so successful they crowd out other wetland plants. That humble cattail can become an invasive botanical overachiever.