A Recipe For ‘Cat Tails’ Anyone?

|Job Updates2 Comments

Here is what I was up to last week working with the Picking / Distribution company of wild products based in Montreal, Quebec.

Does anyone know what you can make with Cat Tails anyways?

  • Gord Dieno

    I’ll bet you’re almost sorry you asked about cat tails by now.

    Gord

    CAT-TAILS

    One of the first signs of spring, as the snow and ice melt away, is the
    appearance of new green spears of cat-tail leaves pushing up through
    the mud and water along the shores of lakes and ponds, and in the
    shallows of swamps and marshes. Frequently, shallow waters are
    completely choked with cat-tails which, by summer, grow to be tall
    graceful plants providing favorite nesting places for red-winged
    blackbirds and for bitterns, coots and other shore birds. The cat-tail is
    also a prefer red food and house-building material for mushrats, who
    cut and pile great heaps of them with other aquatic plants and mud, into
    lodges where they spend the winter, or to which they go by underwater
    channels to feed.

    Each cat-tail plant has a rod-like blossom-stalk, 4 to 8 feet tall, rising
    from a clump of fine fibrous roots bedded in the mud. This stalk is
    enclosed and supported by the lower portions of the tall narrow tapering
    leaves — their upper portions flat, flexible, and curving gracefully. The
    stalk is topped by a cylindrical head about a foot long. In June and early
    July, the lower half of this head which contains thousands of female
    flowers, is about an inch in diameter and looks like green velvet. The
    upper half, more slender and covered with olive-green fuzz, contains
    the pollen-bearing male flowers. By September, the lower half is a deep
    brown plush-like cylinder packed with thousands of seeds which later
    separate from the head and are blown away, each borne by its fluffy
    parachute.

    For ages, artists and decorators have used the cat-tail as a model for
    their designs. The central part of the root and lower stalk, which is
    mainly starch, was dried and ground into meal by several tribes of
    Indians and by the early white settlers. The white tender lower parts of
    the stem and leaves may be eaten in salads. The cat-tail leaves are used
    for weaving, for caulking seams in boats, and for caulking between the
    staves of barrels. The stalk heads, or “cat tails”, are edible if roasted
    when young; when mature and dry they can be dipped in oil and used
    for torches; during the last war they were processed to substitute for
    Kapok in life preservers and mattresses.

  • http://www.bravenewtraveler.com ianmack

    that was a great video. nice job. really offers a glimpse into the cat tail lifestyle.