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.