The handy, dandy cattail

Two mornings ago I lay on the bank of Triunfo Creek as the sun was just rising and long, green, slender leaves grew tall above me. The sunlight silhouetted the leaves, and their green radiated as if shining from the inside.

I discerned the leaves’ internal weblike netting. My eyes followed the pointed tip of the leaf blade down to the plant’s base and up a slender, pithy stalk that culminated in a brown, spongy, cylindrical seed head. Illuminated by the sun, the entire plant seemed to be glowing.

Never had I been so taken by the beauty of a cattail (Typha latifolia). As I lay there with my feet in the water and my back pressed against the stony shore, I thought how easy it was to miss the splendor of the things we see each day.

Cattails are the plants of childhood, when we’d whack the seed heads to see the downy seeds explode and fly in all directions. They are the plants of roadside drainage ditches, growing in the few inches of soil and water that seem to persist no matter how much concrete is poured.

Cattails are the dense tangle of leaves growing along creeks and hindering easy passage. They are also plants of incredible practical use and sustainability.

The first time I realized this was in the back country of Santa Barbara. I dug up the tuberous rhizomes from which these perennial plants grow each year, covered the rhizomes in clay and threw them in the fire.

In an hour I dug them out, cracked the clay casing and ate the delicacy inside. The starchy tuber tasted like a cross between popcorn and a potato, unfamiliar but good.

On that same trip I also used the cattail seeds as tinder to start my fire. Since then I have woven the long bladelike leaves into mats and baskets.

A plant of many uses

Cattails and humans have a long history. The plants grow where people traditionally settle— near shallow, still or slow-moving fresh water. Cattails are common throughout Europe and North America and have been utilized for food, medicine, tools, housewares and other practical uses.

Cattail leaves are about 1 inch wide and 10 feet long and form dense stands. Their stems grow to 10 feet and end in long spikes of tiny flowers. In May through August the flower heads become cigarlike seed heads.

Practically, the leaves of cattails have been used for making matting and baskets. Various American Indian tribes have woven the leaves together to make roofing for homes. Leaves were also used as a kind of caulking to repair canoes and houses.

Then and now, the leaves are interlaced to make seating for chairs. The stalks of seed heads can be dipped in coal oil and used as torches.

During World War II, a Chicago scientist promoted the use of the fluffy seeds for down. This idea was readily adopted, and stuffed animals, life preservers and padding in tanks and airplanes were filled with cattail seeds. This had already been a common practice of American Indians, who used cattails to stuff cradle boards and sleeping mats.

In the kitchen

As food, the rhizomes can be baked, but they are also commonly dried and then ground into a flour.

The young tender shoots growing from the rhizome can be harvested and eaten either raw or cooked as any other vegetable. Charlotte Bringle Clark, author of “Edible and Useful Plants of California,” calls these young shoots Cossak asparagus because of the Russians’ supposed fondness for them.

The base of the mature cattail presents another edible portion of the plant, said to taste like cucumber. The pollen is nutritious and contains as much protein as rice or corn flour but with less fat. The pollen can be used to make cakes and mush.

Some American Indians ate the flower stalks before pollination, either by boiling them or eating them raw.

Medicinally the cattail had tremendous value. The root of the cattail was pounded until it released a gel, which was then made into a poultice and used for burns, scalds, infections, tumors, ulcers and eye problems.

The roots were also used to heal bleeding wounds. If the roots were simmered in milk, the drink was used to cure dysentery and diarrhea. A root tea helped to cure abdominal cramps, kidney stones and gonorrhea.

Chinese herbalists prescribe the pollen and root for pus drainage, bloody stools, hemorrhoids and irregular menses. The flower pollen can be gathered, toasted and made into tea to stop excessive menstrual bleeding, vomiting of blood and nosebleeds.

The many uses of this plant presented here are only the tip of the cattail iceberg. The great abundance and resource this plant offers reminds me of how much lies beneath the surface of everyday things.

Meghan Walla-Murphy can be reached at the following e-mail: mwallamurphy@yahoo.com.