Cattails

Note: This was published in the Spring/Summer 2026 Newsletter of the Community Lakes Association: https://www.communitylakesassociation.org/about-us/newsletters

Imagine a marshy, wetland area. What do you see? Chances are, your thoughts include cattails. These plants are so common, so typical of our ponds and lakes, they may seem uninspired or even dull - just a monotonous green and brown blanket draped across the shallows.

But take a closer look, and you may find a great blue heron silently posing among a cattail's tall stems, or a muskrat building its lodge from a cattail's bladelike leaves, or young fish hiding within the shallow water within a cattail thicket, or dragonflies flitting from one brown cattail seedhead to another, or even a moose munching down cattail stems into the mud. Cattails provide essential habitat and food for many species. They also protect wetland habitats by removing pollutants from the water and preventing erosion.

Historically, cattails had direct importance for people. Every part of the plant was useful at different times of the year as food, medicines, or building materials for native peoples. I can personally attest that both the young, green flowerheads, and the pollen from mature flowerheads are delicious, and fun (if wet and sloppy) to gather.

For a different example, cattail seed fluff was used for buoyancy in life vests during World War II.

Cattails even appear in antiquity. An early English translation of the New Testament mentions Jesus holding a reed during The Passion, and this is often depicted as a cattail. In Greek mythology, the nymph Syrinx was turned into cattails to escape the lustiness of the satyr Pan. In response, Pan fashioned some of the cattail stems into his iconic flute.

Cattails thrive in disturbed and nutrient-rich environments that can occur when people alter natural waterways. This does have a darker side. An aggressive invasion of cattails can push out other species and reduce biodiversity in disturbed habitats. The worst offender is a hybrid of the native broadleaf cattail and the narrowleaf cattail, which may have European origins. Even here, however, there may be a silver lining. Scientists are currently investigating the use of cattails to generate ethanol for biofuel. This is a much more efficient process than using corn, and it doesn't divert food or croplands into the fuel production pipeline.

Whether for habitat, history, food or fuel, cattails are far more entwined with the human story than you might have realized. These ubiquitous wetland plants may never seem quite so dull ever again.