Every part of the cattail is useful. It’s easy to harvest, it’s tasty, it’s nutritious, and it’s a year round food supply.
Cattails (Typha latifolia and Typha augustifolia) are instantly recognizable practically year round.Here in Oklahoma, now is the time to harvest the rhizomes, just before the freezes start. In a week or two, when our coldest weather hits, that's when to harvest the "candlewicks" and the hidden new shoots. Rhizomes can still be collected throughout the winter. In winter, the unharvested brown “candlewicks” of the female flowers turn white. The emerging shoots are recognizable by the nearby white female flower stalks, even though the sword-like leaves with parallel veins resemble other wetland plants.
By late spring, these leaves can be almost 9 feet tall, forming a tight sheath about the stalk’s base and enclosing the immature flower head, which contains male and female parts. The pollen-producing male part rides on top so the pollen can shift down to fertilize the female flowers and then wither away to leave the female flowers to bloom brown and tubular in the fall. And the cycle repeats as the female flowers whiten over winter and the new shoots come up in the spring.
Cattails are a rhizome plant, spreading through the underground in dense stands. Think of it as a shrub growing on its side underground with only the leaves and blossoms visible. Collecting the flower heads and pollen won’t harm the stand because it spreads through the rhizomes. If you collect the rhizomes, collect from the edges so the center grows stronger. The seeds cattails produce are for establishing new stands and if you harvest from the edges, there will be plenty of seeds developing to grow new colonies of cattails. You can harvest the seeds to establish cattails in places more convenient to you - just remember cattails love water, slow moving or still water like the edges of ponds or in deep ditches.
Remember, the leaves of young cattails look like other wetland plants. Some people have confused reeds (Phragmites spp) with cattails and decided cattails taste awful because the barely edible reed shoots taste awful. You have to peel a lot to get to the tender, bitter insides and the “seeds” are as rare as hen’s teeth. In addition to the almost inedible reeds, cattails also resemble the non-poisonous calamus (Acorus calamus) and the poisonous daffodil (Amaryllidaceae) and iris (Iris spp) shoots. Look for the white, cottony remnants of last year’s cattail candlewicks (also called cigars, punks, and ducktails). In spring, the cattail shoots have a tender white inner core that tastes sweet and mild - a far cry from the bitter poisonous and barely edible reeds, irises, and daffodils, or the spicy calamus. None of the look-alikes grow very tall, so by mid-spring identification is much easier.
Cattails grow in water: marshes, swamps, ditches, in fresh or slightly brackish water. If you find cattails, you know you’ve found water.
Before the flower forms, the shoots are peeled and eaten raw, steamed, stir-fried, simmered in soups, tossed in salads, used as a sandwich filling. They have a mild, sweet taste somewhere between cucumbers and sweet summer squash. Harvest in a dry spell in the least muddy locations, mostly because that’s easier. Select the largest shoots that haven’t begun to flower yet. Use both hands to separate the outer leaves from the core to as close to the base as possible and pull it out. Peel off the outermost leaves until you reach the soft, edible core. You can pinch through it with your thumbnail. You’ll have to peel more at the top. Cut off the tough ends with scissors or a knife. Your hands will get covered in a sticky jelly-like substance. Just scrape that off into a bag or container and use to thicken soups and gravies like cornstarch or okra. You get the best yield just before the flowers begin to develop. Both the mucilaginous jelly part and the tender shoot will provide you with beta carotene, niacin, riboflavin, potassium, phosphorous, thiamin, vitamin C.
Some stalks will grow fibrous with the developing flowers by late spring, but just before midsummer, some stands will yield harvests of tender new shoots, immature flower heads, and pollen all at the same time.
If you clip off the immature male parts of the flower and steam it, it will taste remotely like corn and even resemble it somewhat with the fibrous cob in the middle. It’s dry, so serve it with a sauce or oil or butter or fat of some sort. The female portion can be eaten best after steaming so the edible part slips off the woody core. It’s high in vegetable protein, beta carotene, and minerals.
When the male flowers ripen, just before midsummer up north and late May down south, they produce a lot of golden pollen. Cattail pollen beats bee pollen in flavor, energy content, nutrition, and price. Collect the pollen on a calm day by bending the stalk gently over and into a paper sack. Shake it gently and keep the neck of the sack as narrow as possible so the pollen doesn’t blow away. Sift out the debris, and you can then use it as part of a flour mix for muffins, pancakes, waffles, and bread. It doesn’t do too well on its own and it’s a bit time consuming to collect, so mix 3 parts other grain flours to 1 part cattail pollen. I like mixing cattail pollen with acorn flour for muffins, waffles, and pancakes, and with wheat flour for bread and corn meal for tortillas and tamales. The pollen is yummy sprinkled raw on yogurt, oatmeal, fruit shakes, fruit slices, popcorn, and salads.
The rhizomes take some effort to collect. They are bigger in some parts of the country and smaller in others. You may want to dig some up where you live and see what they are like. Once you dig them up, tie them in bunches and place them in running water for a day or so to clean them off - much easier than trying to haul them home and clogging up your drains washing the mud off them. Once the mud is rinsed from them, dry them with a towel or air dry them to the touch. You can peel the rhizomes and slice them, dry the slices, then pound the fibers in a large mortar. Sift to separate the fiber from the starch and save the starch. It’s sweet and does a great job of thickening soups, so is excellent for fruit soups and sweet sauces - better than cornstarch. It’s also tasty as a thick hot beverage (and it takes well to flavorings like cocoa, almond, hazelnut, pecan...) or thickener for fruit smoothies and frozen coffees if you don’t like or can’t have yogurt.
If the rhizomes come from a clean fresh water source, you can clean them, cut them into 6 -8 inch lengths, roast them in coals until well browned, then peel and chew them. They taste somewhat like sweet potatoes, but very fibrous. Don’t swallow the fibers, just chew it and spit the fibers out. It’s not very elegant, but it really does taste good.
You do have to be careful because some types of cattail root starch has to be cooked before eaten or it will cause vomiting. Sample a little bit and if it makes you queasy, always cook the rhizome starch from that patch of cattails. Also, because cattail rhizomes filter toxins out of polluted waters, they may pass the toxins on to you. Unless you’re desperate or the water is fresh and clean, leave the roots alone. The shoots, cobs, and pollen will provide you with plenty to eat.
The buds coming off the rhizomes in early spring are tasty as a vegetable simmered in soups or steamed with a sauce. It’s work to get them up and off in some stands, and really easy in others. The size varies in different parts of the country and depending upon the age of the stand. Harvest from the edges of large stands so you don’t have to wade too far into the water and mud. This will automatically limit how much you collect and help keep the stand healthy and productive.
The jelly collected from the young shoots makes a good salve for sores, boils, mild sunburn, skin inflammations, and small wounds.
The leaves make good roof thatching, can be twisted into dolls like corn husks, and to weave baskets, chair seats, mats, hats, and shoe soles or sandals. Like corn husks, you can let them dry until you’re ready to use them, then rehydrate them to weave them into useful items.
The brown flower heads support a slow burning flame that drives away insects.
The fluffy white seeds make for good stuffing for blankets, pillows, and toys if you use a thick batting to surround it because some people (a lot of people) will develop hives if there’s not a thick enough barrier between you and the seed heads. Cattail fluff will make really soft pillows and really warm quilts - just be sure you use thick quilted fabric to surround the stuffing and stitch it so the cattail cotton can't come out. I like to make flat pads of cattail cotton and then sew those between layers of thick batting and then use the enhanced batting for quilting. Waking up to hives isn’t pleasant, and you can’t know in advance if you’re among the ones who swell up with contact to the seeds of the cattail.
And there you have it - a year round use for cattails.