Title: Cattails: Supermarket of the Swamps
Categories: Amerind Info Vegetable
Yield: 1 Servings

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1. Cattails contain ten times the starch of an equal weight of potatoes.

2. Early spring new shoots pick peel, cook, or eat raw.

3. Harvest young flowerheads, boil and eat like corn on the cob; or pickle.

4. Collect early summer pollen in a bag, add to other flours (protein/vitamins).

5. Winter rootstocks: pick mash rinse, dry, and grind into flour.

6. Use fresh, pounded root directly as a poultice on infections, blisters, & stings. Tie in place over night. Replace for next day.

7. Sticky substance at the base of the green leaf is antiseptic, coagulant, & even a bit numbing.

8. Boil leaves for external skin wash.

9. Starchy, mashed root use as a toothpaste.

10. Use pollen as a hair conditioner.

11. Drink root flour in a cup of hot water or eat the young flowerheads to bind diarrhea and dysentrery.

12. Use the fuzz from mature female flowerheads for scalds, burns, diaper rash & place in diaper to soak up urine.

13. Down makes excellent tinder.

14. Dry stalks use for hand drill, arrow shafts with added hardwood nock and foreshaft.

15. Leaves excellent for thatching, basket weaving, cordage (one of the most important aspect of outdoor survival), and doll, toy, figurine making.

16. Dip brown head of a dry stalk in animal fat for a torch.

17. Pollen is hemostatic & astringent. Place directly on cut to control bleeding. Take internally for internal bleeding, menstrual pain, chest pains, & other forms of blood stagnation.

18. Mix pollen with honey; apply to bruises, sores, or swellings.

19. Pollen is also mildly diuretic and emenagogue. Native American technology arts craft crafts instruction NativeTech Indian http://www.lib.uconn.edu/NativeTech/

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