Field Notes—

Cattails Stir The Stew Of Autumn

My fellow office workers know it is late September because they must confer blessings upon me a dozen or more times a day in the swirling wake of my sneezes — usually two or three in quick succession. Feeling a little too sanctified for the line of work I’m in, I encourage them to collectively convey a blanket blessing for the season and be done with it.

It’s just that I have an ample and sensitive nose, and the early fall air is a stew of stuff: pollen, leaf mold, and the plain old “dust to dust” of New England’s molting deciduous biomass. It is just too much to take in all at once. A few hearty sneezes clear the head and, if the indelicate truth be told, season the stew.

If you get out of the office and walk through the countryside, you will see nearly every wild plant is in the process of casting off something. It is the time of year when growing things loose patience with their rootedness and make travel plans — some more ambitious than others.

The hickory tree in my yard drops nuts in the shade of its own canopy. It can improve its range with a lucky bounce into the street and down the hill, or with the help of a forgetful squirrel who carries it to a distant stash it never finds again. But for the most part, its fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Milkweeds, on the other hand, launch their seeds on silken wind sails in the thick of hurricane season. Now there’s a plant that’s going places.

My favorite herald of the season, however, is the cattail that stalks the bogs, marshes, riverbanks, and damp ditches. Just as the country fairs get into full swing, their flowering spikes turn from corn dogs into cotton candy. It looks good enough to eat.

Actually, at various times of the year, almost the entire plant is edible. The late Euell Gibbons, authority on wild edible plants and author of the classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus, called the cattail “the supermarket of the swamp.” In the spring, the shoots, or corms, of new plants can be dug up and eaten raw or cooked. Let them grow a couple feet out of the water and the shoots can be peeled and cooked as “Cossack asparagus,” named for this delicacy’s popularity in the Russian countryside. The brown “cattail” seed head develops later and can be boiled and eaten like corn on the cob. I’ve never tried it, but it is even supposed to have a flavor reminiscent of corn.

In the fall and winter, the starchy rhizome roots of the cattail plant can be dug up, peeled, and cooked like potatoes. They can also be dried and ground into flour.

The fluff that emerges from the seed head at this time of year isn’t part of the cattail’s extensive menu, but early Americans found that it made pretty good insulation. The leaves of the plant are too tough to eat, but perfect for weaving into baskets, mats, and even shelters. Old Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts has some beautiful examples of utilitarian weavings made from cattails and other bulrushes. Over the centuries folk medicine has also employed the cattail in the preparation of various poultices, antiseptics, and styptics.

All in all, the plant is a survivalist’s dream. But I just like the way it looks, especially with a red-winged blackbird perched upon its stalk. Ignoring all its impressive utility and taking it simply as a thing of beauty, the cattail is still, bless me, nothing to sneeze at.