Rat root
Acorus americanus
Also called Sweet flag, Muskrat root, Wiike
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.
A wetland plant with a strongly aromatic root, carried and chewed in small pieces and held in high regard across the northern plains. It grows beside plants that will kill you, so this one is learned in person.
Learn and harvest this one only alongside a knowledge keeper.
Take care
- Do not dig roots in a slough unless you can positively identify wild iris and water hemlock and rule both out.
- Some strains of this plant elsewhere in the world contain a compound of concern in quantity. The North American plant is the one documented in use here, and it is used in small amounts.
What it is confused with
Deadly look-alikeWild iris Iris missouriensis
Iris leaves are the same sword shape and grow in the same wet ground, but they have NO smell when crushed and their midrib is centred, not off to one side. Iris rhizomes are poisonous. If there is no strong sweet spicy smell, put it down.
Deadly look-alikeWater hemlock Cicuta maculata
Water hemlock grows in the same wet ground and has divided toothed leaves on a branching stalk rather than plain sword-like blades. Its chambered root with yellow oily sap is lethal in very small amounts. Anyone digging roots in a slough needs to know this plant on sight.
Easily confusedCattail Typha latifolia
Cattail leaves are thicker, spongier and rounded on the back, with no raised midrib and no smell.
How to know it
- Smell
- Crush a leaf or scratch the root: strongly sweet and spicy, unmistakable. Nothing else in the slough smells like this, and the smell is the whole test.
- Leaves
- Flat sword-shaped blades rising straight from the mud, bright green, with a distinct raised midrib running off-centre down the blade.
- Edge
- The leaf edge is often slightly crimped or wavy near the base rather than perfectly straight.
- Flower
- An easily missed finger-like green spike sticking out at an angle partway up what looks like a leaf.
- Root
- A creeping rhizome in the mud, pale inside, spongy, with ring marks and old root scars.
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 We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.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
- Roots September to OctoberAutumn, once the tops begin to die back.
Right now it is July. Nothing on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Breathing and colds
- Stomach and digestion
Widely documented across the northern plains, carried in a pouch and chewed in very small pieces for sore throats, coughs and long journeys.
The amount used traditionally is small. This is not a plant taken by the cupful.
We are not putting this online
This entry withholds dosing, detailed preparation. The plants growing alongside this one in the same wet ground are among the most poisonous in North America, and the amounts used matter. Written instructions are not a safe substitute for being shown.
Where to ask instead: Ask at a Birchbark medicine session, or speak with a knowledge keeper in your own community.
How it is prepared
- Dried and stored
Roots are washed, split and dried slowly, then kept whole and cut as needed.
Preparation and dosing for this plant are taught in person, not read off a page.
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.
This is a root harvest, which means you are taking the whole plant. Take from a large stand, take few, and refill the hole you dug.
Go with someone who knows this plant and knows the slough. That is not a formality here, it is the difference between medicine and poisoning.