TYPHA, CAT'S TAIL; a genus of the triandria order, belonging to the monoclea class of plants. There are two species; of which the most remarkable is the latifolia, great cat's tail or reed-mace, frequent in ponds and lakes. The stalk is six feet high; the leaves a yard long, hardly an inch wide, convex on one side: the amentum, or cylindrical club, which terminates the stalk, is about six inches long, of a dark brown or fuscous colour. Cattle will sometimes eat the leaves, but Schreber thinks them noxious: the roots have sometimes been eaten in fallads, and the down of the amentum used to stuff cushions and mattresses. Linnaeus informs us, that the leaves are used by the coopers in Sweden to bind the hoops of their casks.