Effect:
pain relieving, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, hemostatic
Areas of application:
Skin diseases, burns, boils, wounds cuts, insect bites, bruises, skin irritations, toothache, pain, as a strong pain reliever, abscesses, infections, chafing, diaper rash in babies, slows the spread of cancer, stops bleeding, heavy menstrual bleeding, bleeding and pain after Birth, internal bleeding, vomiting blood, bloody stools, bloody urine, uterine bleeding
Plant parts used:
the whole plant
Collection time:
Spring to late summer
To find:
In and around swamps, ponds, lakes and other wetlands.
Ingredients:
essential oils, flavonoids, hormone-containing compounds
Miscellaneous:
Cattails are perennial plants that can grow to 5 to 8 feet tall. The sword-like leaves resemble many grasses, but the plant is easily recognized by its brown, cattail-like flower heads. The alternately arranged leaves are spear-shaped and grow on a simple stem, at the end of which there are a large number of male flowers that form a spike. The flowers wither as soon as the pollen is shed. Cattails bloom from May to July. Tiny female flowers form a dense, sausage-shaped structure just below the male spike. This structure can be up to one meter long and has a diameter of 2.5 to 5 cm. The tiny seeds grow on fine hairs. When ripe, the cotton-like fuzz is blown away to disperse the seeds.
🛑 Its anticoagulant properties could be problematic for people with circulatory problems, as it can slow the blood even more and promote clotting. Pregnant women should not use cattails.
In the kitchen, cattails can be cooked like a vegetable, you can make flour from them, eat them like a potato, in the spring the outer part of the young plant can be eaten like a corn cob, and the pollen can be used as a thickener and flour extender in baking.
At that time, cattails were also used to make fire, as the cattail cotton is highly flammable.
Cattails can also be used to purify wastewater in sewage treatment plants.
In the 2000s, the architect Werner Theuerkorn developed an insulating material from Typha angustifolia by bonding strips of the leaves with magnesite to form panels and initially used it in the renovation of a historic half-timbered house in Nuremberg. In the meantime, a number of other buildings have been insulated with the 2 to 12 centimeter thick, diffusion-open, capillary-active, sound-absorbing and, due to the tannins, mold-resistant panels, which are manufactured in a small factory in Schönau (Rottal), Bavaria. The Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics built a hut at its test site in Holzkirchen (Upper Bavaria) for long-term testing. (Wikipedia)