# Cattail (Typha latifolia) *Cat-tail, reed mace; *Typha latifolia* of Linnaeus; German *Rohrkolben*; the Ojibwe *ab kweskwe*, wigwam cover, and *bebamas n*, it flies around; the Potawatomi *aba’kwe ck*, shelter weed, and *biwie’skwinuk*, fruit for baby’s bed* **Known today as.** *Typha latifolia*, the broad-leaved cattail of pond margins, ditches, and marshes across the northern world: leaves half an inch to three-quarters wide that overtop a flowering stalk of one to two metres, the male spike set directly above the female, which ripens into the brown thumb-thick velvet club of the name and bursts in the end into down. It flowers in July and August. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** Nothing read for this entry describes harm from the plant; the one feeding study was in rats. ## What was it used for? In the Lake country the cattail was shelter, bedding, and medicine before it was food. The Flambeau Ojibwe women, Smith says, sewed the leaves with bone needles and nettle or basswood fibre into wind- and rain-proof mats for the sides of the medicine lodge, the wigwam, and the sweat lodge, rolled and carried from camp to camp; the fuzz of the fruit was a war medicine thrown into an enemy’s face to blind him. Densmore saw the down put around an infant in its cradle and the leaves made into toys; the Forest Potawatomi, by Smith, pounded the fresh root into poultices for inflammations and called the fruit the baby’s bedding. Rafinesque, for the food: “Roots subastringent febrifuge, esculent, yield one tenth of a fine fecula similar to salep, eaten by Indians of Oregon”; the seeds kill mice, and the plant “ought to be cultivated in swamps.” ## What does modern science say? One laboratory study bears on the rhizome as food: flour of the narrow-leaved cattail’s rhizome, fed at ten percent of the diet, prevented the colonic damage of a chemical model of colitis in rats as well as prednisolone did, with less of the enzyme of inflammation in the tissue and less loss of glutathione; saponins, flavonoids, and coumarins were found in the flour. It is a rat study of the sister species, not a trial. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **a fine fecula**: a tenth of the root’s weight, like salep, by Rafinesque: the starch of the rhizome - **saponins, flavonoids, and coumarins**: detected in the rhizome flour of the narrow-leaved species **Mechanism.** In the one feeding study, rhizome flour at a tenth of the diet prevented the colonic lesions of chemically induced colitis in rats as well as prednisolone, lowering myeloperoxidase and alkaline phosphatase and sparing glutathione, without changing the lactic bacteria. **Dose.** A tenth of the diet as rhizome flour, in rats; the pounded fresh root as a poultice, by the Potawatomi. **Standing.** A starch and a building material; the medicine rests on a rat study of the sister species. ## What lore surrounds it? The Ojibwe had two names for it, one for the leaves that covered the wigwam and one for the seed that flies; the Potawatomi called the fruit the baby’s bed. The same fluff that lined a cradle was thrown in a Sioux warrior’s face. What Rafinesque called a fecula like salep, and wanted planted in every swamp, is the starch of the rhizome that every foraging book now begins with. ## What did the older authorities say? **Huron H. Smith.** “The Flambeau Ojibwe women use the cat-tail leaves to make wind and rain-proof mats to be placed on the sides of the medicine lodge or any temporary wigwam or sweat lodge. They sew with a bone needle and nettle or basswood fiber with a hidden stitch, and bind the edges securely with their sewing cord.” Not quite rain-proof as a roof, so birchbark rolls serve for that. The fuzz was thrown into the eyes of their enemies the Sioux. **Frances Densmore.** Among the Chippewa the cat-tail furnished mats and baskets; “the down of the cat-tail rushes was put around an infant in its cradle board,” and the outer covering of the rushes was shaped into toys. **C. S. Rafinesque.** Four species, “all equally useful. Roots subastringent febrifuge, esculent, yield one tenth of a fine fecula similar to salep, eaten by Indians of Oregon”; the leaves serve coopers and mat-makers; with lime they make a cement as hard as marble; “Seeds kill mice. Ought to be cultivated in swamps.” **O. W. Thomé.** The broad-leaved reed-mace: leaves twelve to eighteen millimetres wide overtopping a flowering stalk of one to two metres, the male and female spikes touching or nearly so, the fruiting spike black-brown and about as thick as a thumb; flowering July and August on pond banks and in ditches, not rare. ## Sources - Smith, H. H. (1932). *Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4(3), “Cat-tail,” under medicines, fibres, and other uses. Project Gutenberg, 49527. - Smith, H. H. (1933). *Ethnobotany of the Forest Potawatomi Indians*, Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 7(1), “Cat-tail.” Internet Archive, ethnobotany-of-the-forest-potawatomi-indians-by-huron-h.-smith-1933. - Densmore, F. (1928). *Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians*, Forty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, “Typha latifolia” and the pages on the cradle board and toys. Internet Archive, usesofplantsbych00dens. - Rafinesque, C. S. (1830). *Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America*, vol. 2, “Typha,” pp. 270–271. Internet Archive, b21468710_0002. - Thomé, O. W. (1886). *Flora von Deutschland, österreich und der Schweiz*, Bd. 1, “Gattung 57: Typha,” and Tafel 44. Internet Archive, profdrthomesflor11886thom. - Fruet, A. C., Seito, L. N., Rall, V. L., & Di Stasi, L. C. (2012). Dietary intervention with narrow-leaved cattail rhizome flour (*Typha angustifolia* L.) prevents intestinal inflammation in the trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid model of rat colitis. *BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine* 12: 62. doi:10.1186/1472-6882-12-62 --- *Cattail.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cattail Historical description, not medical advice.