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Broad-leaved cumbungi is a cattail of East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, so it is not one of the cattails you usually meet in American marshes. It looks much like the common cattail Americans know, with a brown, sausage-shaped seed head on a tall stalk. In New Zealand it is called raupō, and in Australia bulrush or cumbungi.

Appearance

Growth form
A perennial wetland plant that spreads by thick underground stems () up to about 1.5 in (4 cm) across. Plants in Japan are usually 3–5 ft (1–1.5 m) tall, but the species can reach about 10 ft (3 m).
Flowers
Each stalk carries a yellow male spike right on top of the brown female spike, with no bare gap between them.

Look-alikes

Common cattailTypha latifolia

Where both grow in Japan, common cattail is the bigger plant, with leaves about 0.4–0.8 in (1–2 cm) wide and a female spike 4–8 in (10–20 cm) long. Broad-leaved cumbungi there has leaves about 0.2–0.3 in (5–8 mm) wide and a female spike 2.4–4 in (6–10 cm) long.

Why they get mixed upIn both, the male and female spikes touch with no gap.

Southern cattailTypha domingensis

Southern cattail often has a bare stretch of stalk, roughly 0.4–3 in (1–8 cm), between the male and female spikes, though the gap can be short. In broad-leaved cumbungi the two spikes touch.

Where it lives

Typical habitats
  • pond and lake edges
  • marshes
  • slow-moving streams
  • salt marshes
Range
Native to Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia, the Russian Far East, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. The cattails common in U.S. wetlands are common, narrowleaf, and southern cattail.
Preferred conditions
It roots in mud along the shore, with its leaves and flower stalks standing above the water.

Growing it

Propagation
It spreads both by seed and by creeping rhizomes, forming dense stands at the water's edge.

Conservation

IUCN Red List
LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction

Culture and stories

Culture and stories
  • The Māori of New Zealand cooked and ate the rhizomes and baked the pollen into cakes called pungapunga.
  • Its leaves were used in New Zealand to build roofs and walls, and many early European settlers' huts there were made from it.

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Broad-leaved Cumbungi (Typha orientalis) — identification, habitat & look-alikes | Moeyo