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Cattails

M

Michael Soldan

Well-known Member
The earlier post about disking cattails got me thinking. The way I understand cattails is this. They have tuberous roots like potatoes or horse radish,they are
white and some people actually peel them and use them for a vegetable. Cattails are excellent at cleaning water as the thick roots slow the flow and allow
particles to sink and degrade. There is a filtering affect by their roots. The growth of cattails is encouraged in marshlands as a way to clarify water
resources. I have had to remove cattails from drainage creeks when they got so thick as to limit the water flow and backed up the creek. In broad marshes
cattails are environmently friendly plants that do good for a water system.
 
I have heard there are edible parts on them and it is possible they do help use up the excess water that accumulates in these low spots. At the same time they make a tremendous snow fence that catches deep drifts of snow through winter. That helps bring the water back up in the slough for spring. So I disk some of them down to prevent extra snow catching there.
 
Yes , like I said Rusty , I've had to destroy them to keep my ditches flowing and draining farmland. They can be a nuisance like any other plant that is not
cultivated.
 
With it being so dry here, some guys were cutting and round baling them, either for bedding or ground up and mixed with feed rations. Show on TV said something about eating the roots, but only at certain times or suffer from a terrible stomachache.
 
Cattails spread from the white fluffy seed and can grow 10 feet tall and likes deeper water.
You can have one plant this year and a thousand plants next year.
On the other hand bulrushes spreads by the tuberous root so it spreads much more slowly.
It only grows about 6 feet tall and likes shallow water and can grow even if the water dries up periodically.
You can tell them apart by the leaves and seed pod but they are so closely related most can not.

Both plants with their microorganisms that live on the plant are as effective as a waste water treatment plant at removing toxins from the water.
In a drainage ditch situation they slow the water and prevent erosion.
In heavy rain they flood the area spreading top soil and nutrients much like the fertile delta area of the Mississippi river.
In a low spot in a field they can take runoff from the field and turn a muddy mess into clear water.
 
Cat tails are all edible. The root is like a potato, the leaves can be eaten as well. The head can be eaten when green. The pollen can be used as flour. There is more but I don't remember it all. Cattle love them and will eat them. Was dry enough this year the neighbors cattle pretty much cleaned up his swamps of cat tails.
 
Sometimes water hemp can grow in a mix with cattails, so make sure the root is actually from the cattail; water hemp is highly toxic.
 
Wife and youngest son harvested the roots as a home school project. Cleaned, cooked, and ate it. She says the taste was not bad, but they were so tough and fibrous that even cooked, they were tough to chew. Nothing like a potato.
 
Yep, some people eat them. On a high end cooking show, they called them bulrushes. More classy that way.
 

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(quoted from post at 02:54:40 10/17/23) Around my area in east central Ohio if you try to disk cattails your tractor and disk is going to be buried in mud real quick.
Click to expand...
I've seen that happen too but due to our wide range of moisture conditions those sloughs can change from small lakes to dry lakes. The slough that I normally pump my water for spraying all summer has now lost all it's water and I can see the dry surface of the slough bottom. I have no doubt I could drive in there with a tractor without a problem. By next spring I will be able to pump water out of it again.
 
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