Cattails

Personal memory by Heather Eileen O'Quin

2023 CEUnited States Postal Service, South Main Street, Dolgeville, Herkimer County, New York State, USA

In Herkimer County (upstate New York), cattails were plentiful in my area 20 years ago. They grew along some roads in moisture retaining lowlands not too far from the pavement. With increasing settlement from more urban areas, the cattails have been over-picked to make fall bouquets. They don't get the chance to reseed and maintain their numbers. In places where there were once 100s of cattails, there are now fewer than 10 . . . if any.

Image: Thomas Cizauskas via Flickr, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)