Idea : Choosing Plants for Minimalist Garden

Typha

Typha is a genus of about eleven species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the monogeneric family, Typhaceae. The genus has a largely Northern Hemisphere distribution, but is essentially cosmopolitan. These plants are known as bulrush or bullrush (mainly in British English), cattail or punks (mainly in American English), or in some older British texts or the current guide book Collins Complete British Wildlife as Great Reedmace.

Cattails or bulrushes are wetland plants, typically 1 to 7 m tall (T. minima is smaller: 0.5-1 m), with spongy, strap-like leaves and starchy, creeping stems (rhizomes). The leaves are alternate and mostly basal to a simple, jointless stem that eventually bears the flowers. The rhizomes spread horizontally beneath the surface of muddy ground to start new upright growth, and the spread of cattails is an important part of the process of open water bodies being converted to vegetated marshland and eventually dry land.
Typha plants are monoecious, wind-pollinated, and bear unisexual flowers developing in dense, complex spikes. The male flower spike develops at the top of the vertical stem, above the female flower spike. The male (staminate) flowers are reduced to a pair of stamens and hairs and wither once the pollen is shed, leaving a short, bare stem portion above the female inflorescence. The dense cluster of female flowers forms a cylindrical spike some 10 to as much as 40 cm long and 1 to 4 cm broad. Seeds are minute (about 0.2 mm long), and attached to a thin hair or stalk, which effects wind dispersal. Typha are often among the first wetland plants to colonize areas of newly exposed wet mud.
Some classifications include the genus Sparganium (Sparganiaceae) in Typhaceae.

Species
Typha angustifolia - Lesser Bulrush or Narrow Leaf Cattail
Typha angustifolia x T. latifolia - Hybrid or White Cattail
Typha domingensis - Southern Cattail
Typha latifolia - Common Cattail
Typha laxmannii - Laxman's Bulrush
Typha minima - Dwarf Bulrush
Typha orientalis - Raupo
Typha shuttleworthii - Shuttleworth's Bulrush

The most widespread species is Typha latifolia, extending across the entire temperate Northern Hemisphere. T. angustifolia is nearly as widespread, but does not extend so far north. T. domingensis is a more southerly American species, extending from the U.S. to South America, while T. laxmannii, T. minima and T. shuttleworthii are largely restricted to Asia and parts of southern Europe.

Typha latifolia
Typha plants grow along lake margins and in marshes, often in dense colonies, and are sometimes considered a weed in managed wetlands. The plant's root systems help prevent erosion, and the plants themselves are often home to many insects, birds and amphibians.
In North America, the native cattails are increasingly being supplanted by the invasive purple loosestrife Lythrum salicaria.

Edible uses

Cattail has a wide variety of parts that are edible to humans. The rhizomes are a pleasant, nutritious and energy-rich food source, generally harvested from late Fall to early Spring. These are starchy, but also fibrous, so the starch must be scraped or sucked from the tough fibers. In addition to the rhizomes, cattails have little-known, underground, lateral stems that are quite tasty. In late Spring, the bases of the leaves, while they are young and tender, can be eaten raw or cooked. As the flower spike is developing in early Summer, it can be broken off and eaten, and in mid-Summer, once the flowers are mature, the pollen can be collected and used as a flour supplement or thickener.