Cattails with car (Typha latifolia).

Here's a little children's rhyming verse from the Pigweed Poems:

Cattail Fall

Cattails, cattails in the Fall,
Brown and round, they stand so tall.

Shaped like a tail that's on a fat cat
that smokes big cigars and wears a felt hat.

Cattails, cattails, that's what they're called,
Brown and round, they stand real tall.

   The tail is on a stem,
   it shakes in the wind;
   The stem is straight as wood,
   collect them I should.

Cattails, cattails growing in the Spring,
Green and sharp, their leaves are straight as string.

They make a thick root that's loved my muskrats,
And maybe even cats who wear felt hats at bat.

Cattails, cattails, that's what they're called,
Don't call'm hot dogs, the cat would be appalled.

  Cattails, cattails in the Fall,
  Brown and round, they stand so tall.

(Photograph made during the third week of September, 2000.
Can be found flowering now along country roads in ditches and other waterways.)

IX.2.2001)