Cattail
Typha latifolia
Also called Bulrush
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
The brown sausage heads standing in every slough. Food at four different times of year, plus mats, bedding and the down that goes inside a cradleboard.
Commonly shared knowledge. Learn it, gather it, and follow the protocol.
Take care
- Learn wild iris first. The two grow together and iris will make you very ill.
- Do not gather from polluted water.
What it is confused with
Deadly look-alikeWild iris Iris missouriensis
Before either flowers, iris and cattail leaves look alike in the same wet ground, and iris rhizomes are poisonous. Cattail leaves are thick and spongy with no raised midrib; iris leaves are flatter and stiffer with a centred midrib and grow in a flat fan.
Easily confusedRat root Acorus americanus
Rat root smells strongly sweet and spicy when crushed and has an off-centre midrib. Cattail has no smell.
How to know it
- Head
- The brown cigar-shaped head is unmistakable and stands through the winter.
- Leaves
- Long flat blades, spongy and rounded on the back, with no strong midrib and no smell.
- Where
- Standing water at slough and pond edges, usually in a dense stand.
The country it grows in
- Sloughs and wet meadows
- Riverbanks and willow flats
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Stems May to JuneThe white tender base of young shoots, pulled from the mud.
- Flowers June to JulyGreen heads before the pollen sheds, and the pollen itself.
- Roots September to MarchStarchy rhizomes through autumn and winter.
Right now it is July. Something on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Food and drink
- Tools and materials
- Skin and wounds
Young shoots, green flower heads, pollen and rhizome starch are all eaten, at different seasons.
Leaves woven into mats. The seed down was used as absorbent padding and inside cradleboards.
How it is prepared
- Food
Shoots eaten raw or cooked; green heads boiled; pollen used like flour.
- Poultice
The jelly from between the young leaves is used on burns and small wounds.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.
Cattail concentrates whatever is in the water it stands in. Do not gather from a slough near a feedlot, a dump, or a sprayed field.