All plants /Aquatic /Cattail
Cattail
Typha latifolia, cattail family. Common in East and Central and West Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Spring shoots; early-summer pollen; rhizome starch
- How
- Shoots raw or steamed; pollen as flour boost
- When
- Shoots March to May, pollen May and June
- Where
- Ditches, tank edges, any standing fresh water
- Value
- Starch, some protein from pollen
Caution: Cattails filter their water, pollutants included, so harvest only from clean water you would trust. Before flower spikes appear, blue-flag iris shoots can fool a beginner: iris is flat-fanned and toxic, cattail is round-stemmed.
Harvesting
Grip a young shoot low and pull; the white base slides free like a leek. For pollen, bend a flowering head into a bag and tap: a minute of drumming yields golden tablespoons.
In the kitchen
The shoot hearts taste of cucumber and leek, good raw or barely steamed. Pollen folds into pancake batter for color and a corn-silk sweetness.
Photo: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.