Cattail is one of four plants this site treats as essential for a forager to know, and it has long been nicknamed the supermarket of the swamp because something on it is edible in every season. In spring there are shoots, in early summer green flower spikes and pollen. This page covers the late part of the year, fall and winter, when the most valuable food on the plant is the starch stored in its underground stems, the rhizomes, along with the small sprouts, or corms, that will become next year’s growth.
Where it grows, and where not to pick it
Cattails (Typha species) grow across North America and much of the world, in marshes, pond margins, slow streams and wet ditches. Where you pick matters more with cattail than with almost any other wild plant. Cattails are so good at pulling nutrients and contaminants out of water that they are planted in treatment wetlands for exactly that reason, and what they absorb stays in the plant. Skip roadside ditches, anything downstream of farm fields, golf courses, industrial sites or septic systems, and stormwater ponds. Choose clean water you know something about, and cook what you harvest; marsh water can carry parasites and bacteria.
Get permission on private land and check the rules on public land, where wetland plants are often protected.
Identifying cattail, and the iris problem
In fall and winter identification is at its easiest. Look for the brown, cigar-shaped seed head on a tall stiff stalk, the one everyone recognizes. By late autumn the heads start to split into cottony fluff.
The dangerous look-alike is iris. Yellow flag iris and blue flag iris grow in the same wet places, their long blade-shaped leaves resemble cattail leaves, and all parts of them are toxic. Their rhizomes can end up in the same muddy handful as cattail. Three checks keep them apart:
- Iris leaves are flat and arranged in a flat fan, overlapping edge to edge at the base. Cattail leaves wrap around one another so the base is round or oval in cross section.
- Iris never carries the brown cigar head. Only dig a cattail that has last season’s seed stalk attached, and follow that stalk down to the rhizome you pull.
- A cattail leaf is thick and spongy inside when you snap it, full of air channels. An iris leaf is thin and solid.
Positively identify every plant before eating any part of it. If a clump is mixed or unclear, leave it.
Harvesting the rhizomes
Expect cold hands and wet feet. Chest waders or tall rubber boots and waterproof gloves make it bearable, and they protect you from broken glass and sharp debris hidden in the muck. Cold water drains body heat quickly, so go with someone and have dry clothes waiting.
- Pick your plant by its seed head, as above.
- Run a hand down the stalk to its base, then keep going down into the mud until you feel a rhizome running off sideways. Rhizomes rarely come up with a plain pull on the stalk.
- Work that rhizome back and forth until it loosens. Do the same on the other side.
- Grip the base of the stalk and pull steadily. With luck a good length of rhizome comes up on each side.
- Cut the stalk off above the base. Keep the corms, the pointed white sprouts growing from the rhizomes and around the base; they are some of the best eating on the plant.
- Swish the rhizomes in the water to knock off most of the mud before carrying them home.
Preparing the harvest
At home, finish cleaning under running water. Some staining will remain; the peeling takes care of it.
Snap the corms off and peel away their outer layers by hand to reach the tender white core. They are mild and faintly sweet. Given where they grew, cook them. A few minutes in a hot pan with butter or oil turns them into an excellent side dish.
Peel the rhizomes with a sharp knife or a vegetable peeler, as you would a potato. Inside is a white core of starch bound up in tough fibers.
Getting the starch out
The fibers are not worth eating, so the goal is to separate the starch from them. There are two ways.
Breaking the rhizomes in water
Fill a large bowl with clean water. Tear the peeled rhizomes apart under the surface and work them between your fingers, rubbing the starch loose, until only stringy fiber is left. Lift out the fiber. The water will have turned milky white.
Leave the bowl undisturbed for around three hours. The starch settles into a dense white layer at the bottom while bits of debris float. Carefully pour off the water and anything floating on it. What remains is a thick white paste.
Scraping
The second method is quicker for small amounts. Hold a rhizome on a board and draw a knife blade, or the edge of a sharp stone, firmly along it from one end to the other, much like rolling up a toothpaste tube. Starch squeezes out and collects on the blade. Either spread this directly to dry or stir it into a container of water so the loose fibers float free, then settle and pour off as in the first method.
Drying and grinding
Spread the wet starch thin on a tray and dry it in a dehydrator, in an oven on its lowest setting with the door cracked, or outdoors in dry, sunny weather. Once it is completely dry, grind it with a mortar and pestle or a grain mill and sift it. The result is a fine white flour that can replace part of the wheat flour in most recipes. Store it dry and airtight.
Cattail and acorn bread
Cattail flour has no gluten, so it works best mixed with wheat flour. It pairs well with acorn flour, made as described in how to make acorn flour. For one loaf:
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter or vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 cups wheat flour
- 1 cup acorn flour
- 1 cup cattail flour
- 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
In a bread machine, add everything in the order the maker specifies and run the basic white bread cycle, which takes about three hours. By hand, treat it as any simple yeast bread: knead, let it rise until doubled, shape, rise again and bake at about 375 °F until the loaf sounds hollow underneath.
Over a campfire the same flour makes ash cakes. Mix it with water and a pinch of salt into a stiff dough, pat it into flat cakes and set them on a bed of hot coals, turning once. Brush off the ash before eating.
The Mississippi State University Extension’s cattail profile describes the plant and its traditional food uses, from rhizome meal to spring shoots.