Bulrush

Typha latifolia

Family · Typhaceae · Harmless

Edible

The plant with the brown cigar on a stick, which everyone recognises and almost nobody can name. It only grows with its roots submerged, and means standing water all year.

Where it grows

Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture

Also known as

cattail, reedmace

In flower

How to tell it

Long, flat, stiff sword-like leaves, and the dark brown cigar inflorescence that bursts into a cloud of cotton in autumn. Always with its feet in water.

What it is confused with

Yellow flag

Iris pseudacorus

Confusion that poisons

Out of flower the sword leaves are confusable and they grow side by side. Yellow flag is toxic and fans its leaves from the base; bulrush has loose leaves and the brown cigar.

What it is for

Chair seats, mats and baskets across the Peninsula. The rhizome and young shoots are edible cooked, but the plant filters whatever is in the water it grows in, which rules out gathering from urban or farm ditches.

Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.

Sources

Flora-On