Description :

• Monoecious, perennial marsh herbs, with creeping rhizomes
• Stems erect, simple, terminated by dense, cylindrical flower-spikes
• Leaves mostly radical, distichous, with sheathing base and narrow, linear, parallel-veined lamina
• Inflorescence a dense spike of closely packed flowers, with male flowers zoned in upper portion, contiguous to or shortly separated from female flowers in lower portion
• Flowers unisexual, minute, wind-pollinated
• Male flowers usually subtended by variously shaped scales or bracteoles; perianth 0(3-6) small scales; stamens 2-5; filaments free or variously connate; anthers linear, basifixed, with broad connective prolonged beyond pollen sacs
• Female flowers ebracteolate or with slender, clavate or spathulate bracteoles, abortive clavate female flowers (carpodia) often produced; perianth of several fine, persistent, filiform or clavate hairs; ovary superior, often stalked, fusiform, unilocular with a solitary pendulous ovule; style elongated, slender; stigma linear or lanceolate
• Fruit 1-seeded, minute, ellipsoid or subcylindrical, with slender stipe with many hairs which aid wind-dispersal
• Seeds with a striate testa and copious mealy endosperm
• x = 15

Nomenclature:

• Typha L.
  • Linnaeus: 971 (1753)
  • Brown: 31 (1897)
  • Smith: 129 (1987)
  • Anderson: 53 (1966)
  • Napper: 1 (1971)
  • Cook: 220 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 8 to 13, cosmopolitan, found in a wide variety of aquatic habitats
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Typha capensis (Rohrb.) N.E.Br., widespread, T. domingensis Pers. only in Botswana