Tails of the City: Part 1
Cossack Asparagus
I have long been a fan of short skinnies, that is the relatively low growing, stalky plants that pop up periodically about Seattle. Two of my favorite bear the appropriate word tail in their names, a fine indicator of their narrow nature. More appreciated is the cattail, Typha latifolia, described by the great naturalist and forager Euell Gibbons as the “supermarket of the swamps.” (Mr. G was once well-known for promoting Grape Nuts (my fave) and, by the way, lived in Seattle in the 1930s, when he was office manager for the Workers’ Alliance of Washington (he soon renounced Communism.)) In contrast, horsetails (Equisetum arvense) led none other than one of Seattle’s most famous plant guys, Ciscoe Morris, to label them as “the worst weed you can get in your garden.” (Part 2 of Tails of the City will focus on horsetails.)
Cattail certainly deserves its reputation as a plant long appreciated by people. Ethnobotanist Nancy Turner has written that it was “probably the most important basket and mat weaving material,” including bags, baskets, canoe sails, clothing, cradles, mats, nets, and twine. The cottony down made it into pillows, mattresses, and diapers. People ate leaves, spike, and rootstock; tattooed with cattail charcoal; and incorporated the down into a variety of burial and and mortuary rituals. A 2001 paper notes that “the underlying theme linking cattail down and concepts of death, the afterworld and spiritual cleansing may be the symbolic potency of the colour white.”
By the way, not everyone likes the spelling I use, cattail. The Brits in particular favor cat’s tail; I am okay with that considering it dates back to 1548, when one William Turner wrote of cattes tayle, or Reedmace, as some preferred. He also added “it hath a black thinge Almost at the head of the stalk lyke black velvuet.” In addition, some people refer to cattails as bulrush, a name more appropriate for sedges in the genus Schoenoplectus (formerly Scirpus), which includes plants known as tule, another plant widely used by Indigenous people. My favorite name comes from the 1850 Annals of Horticulture, “The Asparagus of the Cossacks;” “it may be cut, stewed, prepared for serving with yolk of eggs, enhancing the flavour with nutmeg and salt.”
What recently got me thinking about cattails is how often I notice them on the side of Interstate 5. Even when there is no traffic and I am traveling 60 mph, I can easily see what look like tall brown hot dogs on a stick but are actually long green leaves and stems topped by spikes of tightly packed flowers. I have no idea how common these cattail communities are along I-5 (and WSDOT doesn’t map them) but they seem surprisingly widespread. Those who study the spike tell us that they (the spike and not the researchers) are normally six times as long as thick and that females grow below the males. When pollinated, cattails produce white cottony down, which many people like to produce by squeezing the spike, if you know what I mean.
Plants spread either via their copious seeds or rhizomes and are a pioneer species that colonizes and does well on disturbed habitat. This is probably why I see the little ecosystems along the interstate; the plants are taking advantage of areas that collect runoff and form micro-wetlands, an ironic development, considering roads have long displaced wetlands, which far too many people have seen only as problematic waste sites but, of course, are incredibly important to overall community health of flora and fauna and air and water.
Seattle has paved over or destroyed many of its wetlands. Six bogs once graced Seattle with their floating mats of sphagnum, pink blossomed bog laurel, white flowered Labrador tea, cranberry, and sundew, a carnivorous plant. All are gone, including two replaced by shopping malls: Northgate and University Village. And, when Lake Washington was lowered by nine feet for the Ship Canal, more than a 1,000 acres of wetlands dried up, including the areas of Renton Field/Boeing and Stan Sayres Pit/Genesee Park. But on the good news side, years of restoration has returned the area around the Center for Urban Horticulture back to more wetland-like habitat, visited by more than 200 bird species.
Lest we think that wetland destruction is a thing of the past, the US Government recently had to weaken wetlands protection because of a horrible, pro-business US Supreme Court ruling. I wonder when we will learn to take the long view recognizing the important contributions of wetlands to the health of humans and more-than-humans over short term profits.
Reference: Joanna Ostapkowicz et al, “The Use of Cattail Down as a Sacred Substance by the Interior and Coast Salish of British Columbia,” Journal of Ethnobiology 21 (2), Winter 2001, 77-90.
Two things on your great article. One - Red winged Black Birds are best seen in a cattail marshes. Love to listen to their trill across the water. Two - There is an existing bog just north of Seatac Airport. It is called Tubb Lake and it has been mistreated for years plus a death trap for small children when a school was close by. This is in the now on Port of Seattle land that many use as a park. Rumor has it that there are still some old cars in the bottom. If you are brave enough in the summer, you can walk some planks out onto the floating vegetation. Remnants of old fencing and warning signs ring the east side still. Have not been there for a few years but here is a short article. At the time not only was it very wild and undeveloped but had some homeless camping there. The Port has since cleared out the encampments.
http://batgurrl.net/2015/03/22/tubb-lake-adventure/
Interesting! As always!