SET UP FOR WINTER STORAGE

This is Typha latifolia, the Common Cattail, aka Broad-leaved Cattail.  Dunno why they are called that...looks nothing like any cat's tail I ever saw.
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The sausage-like brown head consists of minute, densely packed pistillate (female) flowers; on the slender stalk above the sausage there was, in the Springtime, a cluster of paler colored stamminate (male) flowers.  After pollination is complete, these dry up and drop off leaving just the stalk to which they were attached.  In the Spring, the pistillate flowers will shed their seeds and redistribute them around the marsh in which it grows.
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They live in shallow, fresh-water marshes which typically have an alkaline pH and will grow to a height of 3-9 feet.  
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Where the water is more acidic, cattails will not be found and the "marsh-like" area is known as a fenn, not a marsh.  Only acid tolerant plants will grow there.
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Favored nesting area preferred by marsh birds and aquatic mammals such as muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) which feed on the root structures of the plant.  The muskrat also uses the leaf stalks to build its nesting mound in which it also spends the winter under ice cover.
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Best in Large