Reedmace
Reedmace
Water & Wetland Plant
The tall waterside plant with brown, sausage-shaped seed-heads — often called bulrush — that bursts into clouds of fluffy, wind-blown seeds.
💡 Fun Facts
- Reedmace is the tall marsh plant with the brown, sausage-shaped heads that look a bit like hot dogs on sticks.
- Each brown head is packed with a huge number of tiny seeds — when it bursts, they float away on little parachutes of fluff.
- It is sometimes called bulrush, and it grows in thick stands at the edges of ponds and lakes.
📅 Through the Year
- Flowering:June to July
Name Story
Typha latifolia
means “the broad-leaved reed”
likely meaning‘Broad-leaved’ is certain, but the first word, Typha, has two competing old explanations — ‘marsh’ and ‘smoke’ — and scholars haven’t settled which is right.
What does its name mean?
- Typha — an old name for a reed or marsh plantGreek typhē — its exact sense is debated
- latifolia — broad-leavedLatin latus ‘broad’ + folium ‘leaf’Decode this word →
‘Broad-leaved’ is clear and true — this reed has the widest leaves of our British bulrushes. The first word is an ancient name for a marsh plant: some link it to a word for ‘bog’, others to ‘smoke’, because the fluffy brown seed-head looks like a smoking torch.