Ate my first Cattail today
 

I've been making an inventory of wild edibles on my place, figuring to start finding out where the holes are in my worst case survival diet. I was told cattails were best in middle June. I picked a small one so there wasn't much bulk but the taste was okay {could use a little butter}.

My list includes: fish {perch, bass, crappie}, frog legs, turtle, bird eggs, wild strawberries, mulberries, blackberries, pecans, walnuts, turkey, deer, squirrel, sheep showers.

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

you can make pancakes out of them too

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

I've heard you have to mix the roots with about half regular flour to make it come out right. Anyway I'll be saving cattails this winter to spread out next spring.

Add to list: rabbits, dandilions, wild garlic, and I've always thought of them as bait: grasshoppers and worms:aetsch:

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

Don't you eat the rest of the cat?

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

:haha: a purrrrfect response

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

you grind the fluffy inside of the tail to a flour-like powder.

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

Hey-

Cattails spread with a rhizome, er, the root takes off and starts a new plant.

Get down into the muck, pull out the roots and replant the plant. Give them a wash and roast. Inside the skin is stuff that is starchy and tastes a bit like coconut. Yummy.

Volzka

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

Here I actually thought you cut your cats tail off...is it a wild weed or something?:bath:

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

Be careful of bioaccumulation of heavy metals.

Cattails are known for their use in bioremediation projects, being excellent heavy metal accumulators.
Sunflower plants are used for pulling lead out of the ground.

Now if they could just find a plant that accumulated gold!

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

or Silver!:rolleyes:

Re: Ate my first Cattail today
 

That's cool. I bought the book "Peterson Field Guides: Edible Wild Plants" Eastern/Central North America. Cattails- eat young shoots and stalk, immature flower spikes, pollen, sprouts, rootstock. Make pine needle tea by chopping up pine needles as fine as you can and boiling them for 5 minutes at least. Pine needle tea is full of vitamin C and it's how old timers avoided scurvy.