About Cattails (the plant)

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Cattails are rather wondrous plants that we often take for granted. Not only are they graceful and lovely, but they are also extremely useful. They act as nature's filteration system for the waters and marshes they inhabit, and can even help lower saline levels. Some of the uses that humans have found for them are below.

Food: Cattails have many edible parts....Practically the entire plant can be eaten. Euell Gibbons, in his classic book Stalking the Wild Asparagus, recommends new bloom spikes cooked as a vegetable and eaten like corn on the cob, pollen mixed with flour, the startchy roots processed into a flour, the boiled or pickled heart of the sprouts, and raw or cooked hearts of the shoots.

For More Info: "Wildman" Steve Brill on forging cattails including links to some recipes.

cattail mats and bark sheets covering wigwam

Building Materials: Cattails have been used to produce both mats and cordage used as building materials, including use by Native American peoples.

For More Info: Building with Cattails

20th century Pima coiled cattail bowl, collection of the Peabody Museum

19th century Skokomish twined cattail leaf basket, collection of the Burke Museum

Basketry: Cattails have been used for thousands of years for baskets and other fiber crafts. Basketry techniques include twining, coiling, and plaiting. Other fiber crafts that cattail leaves have been used for include braiding, chair seat weaving, thatching, rope making, and paper making.

For More Info: BasketMakers.org cattails page offers lots of information, including how to harvest cattail leaves for use in basketry.

Medicinal Uses: Different parts of the cattail could be useful for several maladies. You could use fresh, pounded root directly on infections, blisters, and stings as a poultice as well as using mashed root use as a toothpaste. Drinking root flour in a cup of hot water or eating the young flowerheads would help to bind diarrhea and dysentrery. The sticky stuff at the base of the green leaf is an antiseptic, coagulant, and even a bit numbing, and you can boil the leaves themselves for an external skin wash. The fuzz from mature female flowerheads is useful for scalds, burns, diaper rash, and can be placed in a diaper to soak up urine.

The pollen all by itself is awfully useful, as well. It can be used as a hair conditioner and when mixed with honey it is good applied to bruises, sores, and swellings.Cattail pollen is hemostatic and astringent. When placed directly on a cut it will help control bleeding. It can also be taken internally for internal bleeding, menstrual pain, and chest pains. And on top of that, cattail pollen is also mildly diuretic and emenagogue.

For More Info: Cattails as Supermarket

Toys: Many Native American peoples used cattails in the construction of quite interesting toys.

For More Info: Dolls and Ducks

Padding and Stuffing: Cattail fluff and leaves have been used as packing materials; the leaves were also used to pad boat seams. Cattail fluff is highly absorbent and has been used for diaper wadding as well as stuffing in cushions, pillows, mattresses, and quilts. It is also a good insulator.

And finally (although we're certain you could find even more uses for cattails) we'd like to tell you that cattails make good

Torchs: Simply dip in lard, grease, or oil then light.

Let me raise up my torch to light your path.
Cattails Publishing

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