Typha latifolia (Common cat-tail) ( )

Plant usually coarse and stout; pith of the stem base white; leaves 12-16, 8-20 mm. broad, nearly flat, light green; sheaths cylindrical but open to base; the scarious upper margin tapering to blade, rarely truncate or slightly auricled; spike-bearing stems subequal to or longer than leaves; pistillate and staminate spikes usually contiguous, rarely separated; pistillate spike dark greenish brown to reddish brown, in age becoming blotched with white, usually about 6 times as long as thick, 10-18 cm. long, 1.8-3 cm. thick; flowers without bracts or the bracts hairlike, on slender, often hairlike, compound pedicels; stigma medium brown to dark brown, lanceolate-ovate, conspicuously fleshy, persistent; sterile flowers with an ellipsoid aborted ovary, tipped by a rudimentary style and much longer than the functional ovary; stamens on branched filaments often 2 or 3 to a cluster; pollen 4-celled, elsewhere reported as orange for the species, but ours yellow. Commonly occurring with the other species in coastal and valley marshes, and to the exclusion of the other species in the mountains at elevations above 3,000 feet; widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. "A Flora of the Marshes of California. Herbert L. Mason".