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Home | Plant Communities | Freshwater Marsh

The Freshwater Marsh is an aquatic community of emersed plants. It is found throughout California where there is permanent standing water. The water table is at or just above the surface. Examples would be the margins of lakes and ponds, ditches, and some extensive shallow marshes such as in the Great Central Valley. The ENC constructed a freshwater marsh in 1998 and 1999.

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Cattail

Typha spp.; Cattail Family

• perennial herb with creeping rhizomes; grows 3 - 6 feet high
• unbranched stems, usually submerged at the base
• leaves are long and strap-shaped
• Native Americans ate the fruit raw or roasted. Young flowers, stalks and roots were eaten raw or boiled.
• roots were used to heal bleeding wounds
• leaves were used to make floor mats and thatched roofs

Sedge

Carex obnupta; Sedge Family

• forms large clumps, with long, stout rhizomes
• Native Americans used roots and shoots of many sedges and rushes for fiber and occasionally for food.
• Skippers host on sedges and other plants in the Poaceae family.

Tule

Scirpus spp.; Sedge Family

• perennial, grass-like herb
• leaves are 1" - 2" wide
• reddish-brown to straw-colored flowers are at the very end of the stem; blooms April - August
• Native Americans ground the sweet roots into flour
• seeds were eaten raw or made into mush
• pollen was used to make cakes
• stalks were woven for bedding and roofing
• canoes were made in 3 days by binding stems together, then grouping the bundles together.