Author: Linné, Family: typhaceae
Cattail seems to have been a basic food stuff for Earth's Children, of all food plants it appears the most often.
You can find it everywhere, at the banks of any stretch of water. There are two varieties, typha latifolia and typha angustifolia, which can be used alike. Both are spread throughout the world, the smaller variety only in the northern parts.
Still in historical times the starch from the roots has been used, at least in times of need, to replace cereal flour.
The photo shows typha latifolia, the broad-leaf cattail.
Photo by Brother Alfred Brousseau, St. Mary's College
Text References: Food and Various Other Uses
| CB 2, 14 |
Cattail roots, pulled loose from beneath the surface of marshy backwaters, were even easier to gather.
If they hadn't been on the move, the women would have made a point of remembering the location of the tall stalky plants, to return later in the season to pick the tender tails at the top for a vegetable. Later still, yellow pollen mixed with starch pounded from the fibers of old roots would make doughy unleavened biscuits. When the tops dried, fuzz would be collected; and several of the baskets were made from the tough leaves and stalks. Now they gathered only what they found, but little was overlooked. |
| CB 6, 77 |
Feast for New Cave
The hard fibrous old roots of cattails had been crushed and the fibers separated and removed. Dried blueberries they had carried with them and parched ground grains were added to the resulting starch that settled in the bottom of the baskets of cold water. Lumps of the flat, dark, unleavened bread were cooking on hot stones near the fire. |
| VH 1, 16 |
She dug up some cattail roots; they were stringy and bland, but she chewed on them as she plodded. |
| VH 18, 309 |
The cattails provided more than an old-growth woody stalk for a fire drill. The long leaves woven around and alderwood frame made a lean-to, which helped contain the heat from the fire. The green tops and young roots, baked in the coals along with the sweet rhizomes of the sweetflag and the underwater base of the bulrushes, supplied the beginning of a meal. |
| MH 8, 120 |
"Roots and fruit are stored higher up," Talut said to the visitors, pulling back another drape and showing them baskets heaped with // knobby, brown-skinned, starchy groundnuts; small, pale, yellow wild carrots; the succulent lower stems of cattails and bulrushes; and other produces stored at ground level around the edge of a deeper pit. "They last longer if they are kept cold, but freezing makes them soft." |
| MH 9, 139 |
Talut wanted some grain to mix with the cattail root starch for his bouza." (...)
"Use what you want, Ranec. I'll take what's left," Talut said. "The cattail root starch I have soaking is starting to ferment. I don't know what would happen if I put this in it, but it might be interesting to try it and see." |
| MH 11, 161 |
The big headman passed around more of the bouza, the fermented drink he had made from the starch of cattail roots, while Mamut was preparing himself for the search, and filled Ayla's cup. |
| MH 19, 286 |
When the discussion broke up, Talut doled out more of his fermented beverage, made from the starch of cattail roots and various other ingredients, which he was constantly experimenting with. |
| MH 27, 442-443 |
Mamutoi Spring Feast
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year would be eaten. (...)
Lily bulbs were a favorite, and cattail shoots and bulrush stems. |
| PP 2, 26-27 |
Marshes abounded with tall phragmite reeds, cattails, and bulrushes. |
| PP 4, 51 |
Dinner for Two
She had washed and was cutting up cattail roots, and another white starchy root with dark brown skin called groundnuts, preparing to put them in a tightly woven waterproof basket half-full of water, in which the fat-rich tongue was waiting. (...)
"Besides these roots, I'm going to add the green tops of the cattails (...) |
| PP 7, 95 |
It was cooking in a ground oven, a hole in the ground lined with hot
rocks in which she had put the deer meat seasoned with herbs, along with
mushrooms, bracken fern fiddleheads, and cattail roots she had gathered,
all wrapped in coltsfoot leaves. |
| PP 8, 118-119 |
Traveling Provisions
She took out all the various kinds of dried preserved food she had
brought with them and spread it out on top of their sleeping roll. (...)
Vegetables were also dried - stems, buds, and particularly starchy
roots, such as cattail, thistle, licorish fern, and various lily corms.
Some were steam-cooked in ground ovens before being dried, but others were
dug, peeled, and strung immediately on cords made of the stringy bark of
certain plants or sinew from the backbone or leg tendons of various animals. |
| PP 11, 169 |
Just outside the entrance flap of the nearest one, Ayla saw a pile
of brown cattail roots on a mat of woven reeds. |
| PP 11, 179 |
The Delta of the Great Mother River
Offshore, Ayla noticed an island of tall grass reeds with cattails
growing along the edges. It was likely that cattails would always be a
staple for them. They were widespread and prolific, and so many parts were
edible. Both the old roots, pounded to remove the fibers from the starch,
which was made into dough or soup thickening, and the new roots, eaten
fresh or cooked, along with the base of the flower stalks, not to mention
the heavy concentration of pollen, which could also be made into a kind
of bread, were all delicious. When young, the flowers, bunched together
near the end of the tall stalk, like a piece of a cat's furry tail, were
also tasty.
The rest of the plant was useful in other ways: the leaves for weaving
into baskets and mats, and the fuzz from the flowers after they went to
seed made absorbent padding and excellent tinder. Though with iron pyrite
firestones Ayla didn't need to use them, she knew that the previous year's
dry woody stems could be twirled between the palms to make fire, or they
could be used as fuel.
"Jondalar, let's take the boat and go out to that island to collect some cattails," Ayla said. |
| PP 11, 180 |
When they drew near, Ayla noticed that it was the smaller variety of cattail that grew so thickly near the edge, along with bay willow brush, some nearly the size of trees. |
| PP 11, 182 |
Though Ayla (...), she finally began to pull up some of the cattails and put them into the boat, since that was the reason they had come. |
| PP 12, 187 |
One day they rode past fields upon fields of cattails, with brown flowerheads bunched into the shape of sausages, topped by spikes covered with masses of yellow pollen. The next, they saw vast beds of tall phragmite reeds, more than twice Jondalar's height, growing together with the shorter, more graceful variety; the slender plants grew nearer the water and were more densely packed together. |
| PP 12, 199 |
He had just finished a wonderful meal of some of the fish, plus the
slightly fishy-tasting eggs of marsh birds, a variety of vegetables, a
doughy cattail biscuit cooked on hot rocks, and a variety of sweet berries. |
| PP 24, 410 |
Cattail 'Pancakes'
Next, through she had to break the ice to dig them out, Ayla collected
several cattail roots, and the rhizomes from some dormant licorice fern.
She pounded both of them together with a rounded stone in a wooden bowl
with water to extract the tough, stringy fibers, then let the white starchy
pulp settle in the bottom of the bowl while she looked through her supplies
to see what else she had. |
|
Abbreviations |
Editions |
| CB |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
The page numbers refer to the hardcover editions by Crown Publishers, Inc, New York 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990.
Book 1-3 are the Special Collector's Edition, I don't know if the page numbers differ from those of the 'normal' hardcover editions. |
| VH |
The Valley of Horses |
| MH |
The Mammoth Hunters |
| PP |
The Plains of Passage |
| (...) |
omission |
Copyright |
| ... |
original in text |
All book quotes: © Copyright Jean M. Auel
The format and text contents of this site are the property of the author |
| MGMH |
'A Modern Herbal', by Mrs. M. Grieve |
Comments, suggestions, errors, anything else ... emails are welcome!
|
Author: Linné, Family: typhaceae