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The Cattail - One Of The Most Useful Plants
What's the best of the best wild edible
plants you should know? This depends on whether you are collecting
a tasty meal, or need maximum calories, and it also depends on
the season and your location. Still, despite all these qualifications,
there is one plant that stands out as especially important in
North America: The cattail.
Latin name typha latifolia (and a few other
species), the cattail is one of the first of the wild edible
plants that all backpackers should get to know. The several edible
parts are just the start of its usefulness. One part or another
of the plant can be harvested for food whatever the time of year.
Then there are the other uses.
Spring
Find a cattail swamp and cut the fresh
tips of the plants from the muck. Clean them in some safe water
and they are edible either raw or cooked in any variety of ways.
When you know the plant, identifying the new shoots is easy.
Stalks and dried flower heads of the old plants are always standing
in the swamps and wet areas they live in.
Summer
You can first harvest the tender stems
early in summer, which are white and ready to eat for the first
few inches up from the base. Pull slowly and they will often
come loose easily. They taste something like cucumber when raw,
and more like corn when cooked.
In mid to late summer the green flower
heads can be cooked and eaten like corn-on-the-cob. In some places
you can collect a meals worth in a minute or two.
The yellow pollen will be falling from
the spike atop the flower heads during the summer as well, and
can be shaken into a paper bag to use in thickening soups or
even mixed with flour for making bread or pancakes.
Fall
Locate the cattail by the old stalks and
dig up the rope-like roots that criss-cross the swampy soil.
Wash these, mash them in water and let the mix sit for a few
hours or longer. When you pour off the water you'll have a gooey
mass of starch at the bottom of the bowl or tub. Use this to
make a bread of sorts, or just put it into emergency soups for
some good starchy calories.
Winter
Use the roots, just as in the fall, if
the water or mud isn't frozen too hard. Often you can dig into
the muck and find fresh new tips of the plants to eat as well,
especially later in winter.
Other Uses
Fresh plant tips, tender parts of the stalks,
flower heads, pollen, and the roots - that's five edible parts
in all. At least one available in each season too, but that's
not all. Cattail "fluff" which makes up the seed heads
of the mature plants was once used to stuff life jackets, and
is still perfect as insulation in an emergency. If ever lost
and without sufficient clothing, fill your jacket with it, or
use it to make a warm mattress.
The flower head fluff is also very flammable,
making it a good tinder. Open up a mature flower head with your
hands (available almost any time of the year) and make a pile
of the fibers. A match, or even a good spark, will cause it to
burst into flame. Fortunately, the tight seed heads are usually
dry inside even after a heavy rain.
Cattail leaves are long and flat,
making them easy to weave into simple mats for sitting on, laying
on, or serving food on. They were woven into baskets and other
containers for many centuries. Cattail stems were used for weaving
and other purposes too.
The common cattail plant is not only one
of the best wild edibles, but one of the best wilderness plants
to know period. Not many plants have five edible parts and several
parts that are useful for a variety of survival uses. They can
be found in wet places across North America. Backpackers and
others who spend time in the wilderness should get to know the
cattail before all other wild plants.
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