Sonja

Not this one, please. Use a Typha latifolia or Typha×argoviensis. Everything on these is much larger anyway. :o)

If you could read the german text syou would know they are extremely protected and at the brink of extinction. And in the few places where they occure, the large common species are also present. Going very near to collect anything of them is not legal for people without a special permit. So no taking of the fluff least you trample rhizomes. I took pictures with the 300m lens when I spotted them without leaving the gravel path of course.
And I know a lot of things you can do with common cattails, even kitchen recipes, but it got to be always matched to the places where they grow. Where they are used alive as surface water filter you should refrain from all other uses but "energy recycling". Cattails bind toxic waste like runoff with particles from fuel fumes and rubber tyres and divide the bad things from the water, so using cattails from civilisation landscaping for anything tribal societies or poor people up to the early 20th century used them is not very advisable unless they grow upward from dense human settlement and away from the passroads, or in a controlled environment where they get most of their moisture from drinkable tabwater and comperatively clean rain.