By Journalist Jay
If you’re lucky enough to have a wetland, pond, or persistent wet area on your property, there is a very good chance you have cattails there. The cattail is an emergent plant commonly found on the edges of lakes and wetland habitats. The plant has dark green, sword-like leaves that are three-feet or more tall. The flower is a cylindrical spike found at the top of the plant. Right now, it is not sporting the puffy seedhead and brown leaves that we see in winter. This plant, while not necessarily beautiful, and not popular to all, fills a very important role for some wildlife, so on a cold, snowy day, it fills a niche in our winter wonderland.
First, in Michigan, we have two kinds of cattail –broad-leaf cattail and narrow-leaf cat-tail. According to Michigan botanists, the narrow leaf was introduced to our state. Both are prone to spreading, but both are high quality plants. The narrow-leaved cattail can stand deeper waters than broad-leaved cattails, even two and a half feet or deeper, while broad-leaved prefers water no deeper than two and a half feet. They can both do well in shallower water, too, but are wetland obligate, which means they pretty much have to have their roots in wet soil through their growing season.
They are actually fairly easy to tell apart. First, the leaf. One is broad, and one is narrow. The broad-leaved cattail leaf is about one inch wide, and the narrow-leaved cattail is about half an inch wide. The other way to tell them apart is by their flowering structure. The broad-leaved cattail’s male and female sections are together, and the narrow-leaved cattail sections are separated by several inches or so.
They are both widely dispersed by seeds, those fluffy heads in winter are blown everywhere, but also spread via rhizome in a given location, and can form large mats, given the right conditions. These two traits may make it undesirable to some, and they certainly behave in an invasive manner.
For muskrats, who feed on the rhizomes and use the dead leaves to build their homes, this means a feeding frenzy, and a veritable free lumber yard, so if you see a good stand of cattails you’re likely to find a muskrat nearby. Red-winged blackbirds also use the plants as perches, but their seeds are not a huge food source for any animal. A dense stand is also not attractive to ducks, but I have seen geese build their nests amongst a stand of them especially if there is old muskrat house or willow making a root mass.
Fires don’t harm the plants as the underground rhizomes aren’t negatively affected by the flames, but geese, herons, egrets and other waterfowl use the burned areas for feeding and nesting. This didn’t make the early farmers happy trying to reclaim acreage, as their root system soon restored the cattails. Both species can be found in virtually every county in Michigan.
Cattails have been used by various tribes around the country, and among those uses were food. The rhizomes were ground up and used as a flour and the shoots were eaten like asparagus, medicine (poultices were used to treat wounds, roots were used to treat kidney stones, their tufts were used to reduce chafing for infants and other purposes such as basket making, mats, capes, thatching for tipis and more).
While it’s not always showy, the greenery it provides, the interest in the winter, and the food and cover it provides our furry and feathered friends (plus a few moths whose caterpillars feed on the plant), make it a nice addition to almost any pond or wetland. You don’t need to plant it though. To paraphrase a line from a great movie “Field of Dreams,” provide a consistently wet spot with little or no disturbance, and they will come. Some DNR officials feel the loss of cattail acreage helped cause the decline of the Pheasant population in Michigan; it provided wonderful cover in winter. Some ask if the cattail is edible, yes but often considered a survival food. It has five edible parts: rhizome (starchy root), young shoots, hearts of stalk, pollen (flour substitute), immature green spikes (like corn). Foraging season: shoots in spring, hearts late spring, pollen midsummer, spikes early summer, rhizomes year-round. To be safe, only harvest this plant from clean water. Cattails accumulate pollutants and heavy metals from polluted sources. Be sure what you are taking is truly a cattail, as some other aquatic emergents are similar in looks, like the irises.
And this is the world according to Jonesy, who is looking forward to P&M Pumpkins opening up as the have the best selection of pumpkins and squash, and they are the only place that sells fresh cut eucalyptus branches.
