### plant | tracheophyte:

Cattail
* Most cattail live in freshwater but few species lives in little salty marshes
  - cattails grow from seeds
* Most cattails grow in fresh water
  - marshes and wetlands
  - the rivers
* Most cattails have internal tissue
* Most cattails survive in degrade habitats
* Some cattails become pests
  - carry seeds
* Some cattails have aroma
  - green leaves
  - odor
  - ranges
* Some cattails have slender green leaves
  - spicy aroma
* Some cattails produce abundant seeds
  - flour
* also have medicinal value
  - provide relatively secure places to set up a nursery and raise a family
* also reproduce asexually by rhizomes
  - when underground rhizomes spread
* are a group of monocot flowering plants belonging to the taxonomic genus typha
  - perennial and a common marsh plant
  - aquatic plants common in creeks, ditches, and ponds
  - emergent plants
  - found almost everywhere in the world
  - hermaphroditic, meaning that the male and female plant parts grow on the same plant
  - important for lots of winter cover for resident game, and furbearers
  - just as variable in other purposes as they are a food and medicinal source
  - located in ponds
  - longtime choices for flower arrangements with natural or dyed wild grasses
  - marsh plants
  - one of the favorite foods of muskrats
  - part of the natural habitat for wetland ecology
  - perennial marsh plants that never truly die
  - perennial, returning each year and repeating the same cycle
  - reeds
  - tall reed-like plants growing in or around water
* are the most visible effect of the nutrient imbalance
  - perch of choice for red-winged blackbirds establishing a territory
  - supermarket of the wilds
  - used in many polluted water ways to filter and cleanse the water
* can also germinate or root sprout in shallower water during dry periods
  - become so numerous since they have two means of reproduction
* can grow on a wide gradient of substrate types
  - very high in Wisconsin wetlands in the summer
* contain ten times the starch of an equal weight fo potatoes.
* create large colonies in wet areas throughout the United States.
* form dense stands and provide favorable habitat for red-winged blackbirds.
* get their name from their mature brown cylindrical flower spikes.
* grow in dense stands
  - partial shade or full sun
  - so rapidly that they threaten to exclude other plants
  - well both in full sun and part shade
* have a large rhizome system that enables the plant to regrow after the topgrowth is killed
  - many edible parts, top to bottom
  - values
* help protect the banks of a pond from erosion.
* hydrophytic plant
  - cells
  - leaf shapes
  - nuclei
  - pads
* line the small irrigation ponds which double as refuge for ducks, cranes, and egrets.
* live in marshy areas at the edge of ponds.
* love the chemicals and nutrients that destroy the periphyton.
* often dominate large areas, especially where water levels fluctuate.
* produce seeds in late summer and early fall.
* provide food, animal hiding places, and resting spots for emerging nymphs
  - shelter and food for wild waterfowl
* reproduce by growing and spreading rhizomes through the summer
  - sexually by seed and vegetatively by the production of rhizomes
* require a low salinity, a high amount of moisture, and a moderate amount of nutrients.
* serve as roosts and nesting areas for birds and fish.
* spread by their wind-borne seeds.
* take up water and pesticide dissolved in it.
* tend to grow in high organic matter soil on surface than texture mineral soil
  - invade native plant communities due to their high competitiveness
* tolerate perennial flooding, reduced soil conditions, and moderate salinity.
* use some pollutants as nutrients.