Cattail Dinner

You may already know that cattails are an important food source for many birds and mammals; but did you know that they can be eaten by us humans as well?  Cattail pollen, flowers, roots and young shoots are all edible. Pollen and roots can be added to and made into flour. A young flower can be eaten like corn on the cob or even pickled. Young shoots can be stir fried or sautéed like asparagus.

Cattails should definitely be on our adventurous eating bucket list; but it's very important to only eat plants from non polluted areas and to make sure that you aren't harvesting from a protected area.

The wetlands adjacent to Lily pond used to have Cattails, but I haven't seen any there since the day I witnessed a truck leaving the pond access road with its bed overflowing with them. Lily pond and the wetlands around it are Class 2 wetlands. A Class 2 designation means that they are significant wetlands with a protected buffer zone of fifty feet.

Since cutting and removing vegetation from a Class 2 wetland  is prohibited, we are just going to have find our cattail dinner elsewhere. - Norma Manning

Cattails propagate by both seed and rhizomes

Cattails are a sure sign of wetlands at this Pond road location