Cattails vs. phragmites ; new signs

The cattail wetland south of the Bathurst St bridge is one of the glories of Cedarvale Ravine. As I know from the questions they ask, many people do not realize that the cattails renew themselves annually. My friend Phil Aber recently sent me “before and after” photos of the wetland. Here is the “before”, taken after the winter, with last season’s cattails lying dead:

At some point, it was possible to see the shoots of the new cattails emerging through the dead stalks. Here is the “after” photo, taken at some point after that, with the new crop well advanced:

The cattails are a mixture of three types. The broad-leaved cattails (typha latifolia) are native. The narrow-leaved cattails (typha angustifolia) are non-native. These types interbreed to produce a hybrid (typha x glauca). Both narrow-leaved and hybrid are invasive and can displace the native variety. Sadly, knowing this, I now observe that the majority of the cattails appear to be narrow-leaved.

All cattails consist of an upper part that is male and a lower part that is female. The pollen is in the male part and spills down to fertilize the female part below. The narrow-leaved and hybrid cattails have a gap between the upper and lower parts. This can be seen in the photo by Rona Macdonald below:

Here is a closeup where you can clearly see the gap between the two parts:

Cattails look somewhat similar to a completely different and highly invasive plant : phragmites or the common reed (phragmites australis). There are small patches of this nasty plant in the ravine. This one is next to the Glen Cedar bridge:

One way of telling phragmites from cattails is that phragmites do not have auricles at the base of the leaves; instead they have hairy ligules:

Until now, the phragmites has not spread far in the ravine. We have been warned it could potentially displace the cattails. If it started to do so, we would have to take steps to stop it. Phragmites is not one of the invasive plants Toronto Nature Stewards is permitted to remove.

Two new signs have recently appeared in the park. A new laneway sign has gone up at the end of Durham Ave. It commemorates Mrs Evelyn Green:

She was a labour and community advocate, who lived on Arlington Ave for more than 50 years. She was a dedicated civil servant and focussed mainly on labour issues. Former MPP Jill Andrew spoke about her on Labour Day 2022.

The other sign is on a container on the main path near the tennis courts. It was put up by a program called Jumpstart that was started by Canadian Tire in 2005 to help children overcome financial and accessibility issues via an app that (I think) provides access to equipment such as these three balls:

Here is the other side:

If anyone knows more about this program, please let me know.

Our federal MP Leslie Church held Canada Day (July 1st) events in several parks. Cedarvale was one of them, from 3.00 to 4.30 pm. Free ice-cream was offered, so I went to have a look:

There was indeed a table beside the arena with “merch” on it. I left behind a copy of our “merch” consisting of our one-pager. Leslie Church herself was not there at that time. However, I enjoyed my free ice-cream:

I was away visiting my daughter in Manitoulin Island for a few days, but am now back. Hope to meet some of you as usual in the park.

John