Weekend Cattails

This past weekend, my two older boys and I finally discovered a good place to harvest cattail rhizomes (horizontal stems that, in the case of cattails, are underground). If you read almost any book on edible wild plants, you'll soon discover that cattails are the supermarket of the wilds. They contain so many edible parts that there is something one can eat during any season (if you can dig into the ground in winter, that is). What's more, they are almost everywhere you look – the sides of highways, the edges of ponds and lakes, the drainage ditches near parking lots at shopping plazas. Unfortunately, often the plants are inaccessible except by canoe, are growing in compacted soil that makes for difficult digging, or are located in polluted or at least dirty waters (no car runoff in my cattail rhizomes, please). I am looking forward to collecting some cattail pollen (and trying cattail pancakes), spikes, buds, and hearts once spring arrives, but when I started on my foraging adventures last summer, it was too late for these parts. I've thus been on the lookout for cattails whose underground rhizomes I could easily get to.


This weekend we found the dead stalks of last year's cattails at the edge of a pond on some local conservation land. The boys discovered (OK, I discovered) that if you pinch the brown spike at this time of year, it will release its fluffy seeds in a slow but dramatic poof. The boys had fun spreading cattail seeds all over the pond and even in a little puddle that seemed to have grander aspirations. The ground is too frozen for us to dig up rhizomes, but as soon as it thaws and the new rhizomes start growing, we'll be out there collecting some laterals, which are the cattail part I'm most excited to try. Cattails reproduce by sending out horizontal, underground stems and then shooting up a new stalk every once in a while; the older rhizomes are apparently tough and fibrous (although fine for making flour), but I have read that the rapidly growing portion, called the lateral, is smooth, not fibrous, and delicious.

I did actually dig up one lateral  last year, but I haven't eaten any. Growing at the edge of my town beach is a small stand of wimpy-looking cattails, and after the kids' swimming lessons one day I decided to see whether we could find a few laterals. I pawed around in the mud and soon found a nice-looking specimen. I handed it to my middle son (who was 3) to hold while I searched for some more, but unfortunately I just kept pulling up dead rhizomes and eventually decided to give up. We could all share the one I'd found and decide whether it was worth searching for a better stand. When I turned to my son, however, the lateral was nowhere in sight; it turns out he'd promptly eaten it! "You ate the whole thing?" I asked, incredulously (it had been about 8 inches long). As I guess you can tell, my son thought it was delicious, and I hope I'll think so too – if he lets me try one someday!