[syoungs]

There are area's around me that have a bounty of cat tails, but alot of the area's are located on a river that is considered "dirty", high nitrate/nitrite level, not sure of the urea content now, but used to be high in urea, lots of run off about 40 river miles up river from dairy farms, feed lots and other agricultural uses, the WDFW in my state publishes that it is only safe for pregnant women and children to eat 1 meal a month from fish caught in this river. I am not sure if any foilage grown directly in the river (such as cat tails) would be safe to eat, or if I should avoid them all together, this isnt just for a survival reason, I would like to harvest some to just learn how to process, and I have a few differnt dishes I would like to make that I found in a old family cook book that call for different parts of cat tails.

Anybody have any idea on the saftey of cat tails in a questionable water source?

thanks in advance.

 

[gejoat]

Check with your state agriculture agents or County ext agents

 

[LIBERTYCHICKEN]

Not sure about the cat tail it's self but the rhizome shud be cooked well

 

[Vanishing Nomad]

I am told you can eat them raw, however since I would never drink the water where they grow, without boiling it, I would not eat them raw.

 

[syoungs]

Never even thought to check with the county!
Thanks for the help guys!

 

[HandLoad]

Please Point to, or post some of the recipes!

 

[watermaker]

I know cattails are used in wastewater biological filtration wetlands to help clean the water so I would not eat them from that river. Why dont you try growning your own in a small kiddy pool filled with some soil and water. You can harvest the seeds from the river cattails to seed the pool.

 

[watermaker]

http://www.cattails.info/Cattail_Recipe.html

Follow the link for some nice sounding recipies.

 

[edibleplantguy]

Greetings All,

A research project, several decades ago by the Cranbrook Institute, found that cattails and other aquatic plants with starchy rhizomes (underground stems) actually scrub polluted water and sediments clean of heavy metals.

In my world, firstly, I always counsel foragers to procure aquatic food plants from the cleanest water/environment available. That said, in a more dire survival situation, I would counsel that one could possibly use healthy looking aerial parts (new shoots [Cossack asparagus], male flowers and female flowers, but avoid the usually useful starch-bearing rhizomes, as we don't usually think of lead, cadmium, mercury, or thorium as vitamins.

Thanks for reading.

edibleplantguy

 

[redneckwildman]

They can filter out everything but heavy metals is what I was told. I have eaten them all over the US, and Mexico, never worrying about it and have no side effects that I am aware of. Even in Nevada, and Western Oklahoma where there used to be lots of silver mines(They used Mercury to push the silver out of the soil), and notice that every water supply make the taste of the cattail growing there unique.

 

[redneckwildman]

Greetings All,

A research project, several decades ago by the Cranbrook Institute, found that cattails and other aquatic plants with starchy rhizomes (underground stems) actually scrub polluted water and sediments clean of heavy metals.

In my world, firstly, I always counsel foragers to procure aquatic food plants from the cleanest water/environment available. That said, in a more dire survival situation, I would counsel that one could possibly use healthy looking aerial parts (new shoots [Cossack asparagus], male flowers and female flowers, but avoid the usually useful starch-bearing rhizomes, as we don't usually think of lead, cadmium, mercury, or thorium as vitamins.

Thanks for reading.

edibleplantguy

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^this sounds better than how I was saying it^^^^

 

[syoungs]

thank you all for the replys, I think I will hold out and harvest a bunch from a clean lake I duck hunt over (cleaner then the yakima river anyways)