Utah Lake: Cattails

Typha latifolia (The Cattail)

What used to be much more hidden in the Utah Lake Phragmite jungle is the botanical wonder we call the cattail, and as outward changes occur the cattail once again is becoming a better competitor in the Utah Lake echosystem. These rhizomatous plants used to be much more dominant on the shores of Utah Lake. Infact, in my kayak adventures I have stopped to chat with some of our native american neighbors harvesting these and other plants, as there ancestors did, here on Utah Lake. The unique flower seems to have a mysterious history and is also an abundant food source along with other parts of the plant. In this perennial delight you can see there are many uses for a people living near Utah Lake.

The flowers look like corndogs on a stick in the spring and summer. In the fall and winter they look like cotton candy. They have made me hungry a few times while out on an afternoon paddle. However, I wouldn't try eating one of those corndogs, you may get an explosion of cotton in your mouth as waiting seeds are anxious to break out of thier shell to be dispersed on to fertile ground. 

It is always best to know what you are doing when it comes getting food out of a plant. After all, nodody would eat the bark on a fig tree when they could have a delicious fig. Thousands of years of discovery and events have occured to find all the food sources you can derrive from a cattail.

One of these days I will get arround to trying some cattail bread or maybe some pastry made from creeping rhizome flour. For now, I will just enjoy the beauty as I paddle by, contiplating the history and awesome wonder of the cattail.