There is a big "sausage" stuck by the water. If you dare to eat it, your mouth will be covered with frying!

In this week's "Museum Calendar", a bunch of "grilled sausages" appeared, with the word "Cattail" clearly written on the edge.

Image from: November 2021 "Museum Calendar"

I stared at the calendar and thought: Well, I can understand why it is called "Xiang" Pu, because the grilled sausage is really so fragrant. And it has to be the kind of thin and long starch sausage. I don't even like to eat it with a bite of meat.

(What does this have to do with anything?)

What exactly is “grilled sausage”?

I'm getting off topic. This article is not about grilled sausages. The main character is cattail.

Some people say that cattail is water candle. But in fact, **cattail and water candle are two different plants of the genus Typha. **To distinguish between the two, we must first understand the structure of cattail, especially what is the big sausage?

I really can't stop talking about sausages...

cat-tail

Image from: wiki

Cattail (Typha orientalis) is an aquatic plant of the Typhaceae family and the genus Typha, which can also grow in swamps.

There are two types of cattail stems, rhizomes and **aerial stems****. **The rhizomes crawl underground, ready to grow new branches and roots. Like the rhizomes of lotus, the rhizomes of cattail are also milky white and edible. The aboveground stems can grow to 1.3-2 meters high, which is about the same height as us. For herbs, it is really not short.

Gathering cattail rhizomes

The picture comes from the Internet

Going up the stem is the "sausage" part.

In summer, it may be a green sausage that is split into two. Cattail flowers are unisexual , and the upper part of the sausage is the male inflorescence, which is interspersed with several bracts that look like leaves. The lower part is the female inflorescence, which also has a bract at the bottom. These bracts will fall off after flowering.

Image from: wiki

Are you kidding me? The flowers are so simple?!

That's right, cattails don't have pretty petals, and they don't need to attract insects for pollination. The male inflorescence will soon turn into a bunch of yellow, which means the pollen is mature and ready to be blown away by the wind. As the pollination process ends, the male inflorescence gradually withers and blows away, leaving only an empty stalk, while the female inflorescence turns dark brown, which is the brown sausage part we see, which is actually the fruit sequence.

When the fruit is ripe, the infructescence looks calm on the outside, but hides an explosive heart - just gently rub it, and a large amount of fluff will burst out . When rhinitis patients see this scene, they feel itchy in their noses even through the screen.

True: reduced to ashes

There are many kinds of "grilled sausages" by the water

Now that we know that the true appearance of the big sausage is actually the infructescence, we can now use the infructescence to distinguish between cattail and water candle!

The female inflorescence of the water candle is longer , reaching 15-30 cm, more like a long candle, while the female inflorescence of the cattail is generally less than 15 cm.

Water Candle

Image from: wiki

If the male inflorescence has not completely fallen off, we can also judge from the positional relationship of the male and female inflorescences - there is a distance of about 5 cm between the female and male inflorescences of water candle , while the male and female inflorescences of cattail are closely connected.

Have you given up on studying? Take the test:

Among the various species of the genus Cattail, there are also infructescences that are as thick and short as volcanic stone sausages, such as the relatively short plant of the small cattail ****.

There are about a dozen species of cattails, which are widely distributed in China. Since they look so similar, you don't have to worry about them when you see them in the future. Just call them cattails.

This style of painting is cuter

Image from: gardenia

There is another kind of "sausage" that also grows by the water, which is the calamus (Acorus calamus) that is very common in garden landscaping. The names are only one letter different, but the inflorescence of calamus is thick with a hint of dense fear, and the plants are mostly about 1 meter tall, slightly shorter than cattails.

As for the reeds by the water, no one should be able to distinguish them from cattails. After all, reeds don't look like sausages at all.

I specially found a picture of calamus that is not so dense and scary.

Image from: garden.lovetoknow.com

Hope of survival in the wild

Knowing so many types of cattails is just our pursuit and need for knowledge, and the practical side of cattails is what we value more in our daily lives. For example, eating!

In the previous article, we mentioned that the milky white underground stems of cattail are edible. Together with the new sprouts of cattail, these two parts are called cattail leaves, grass teeth, or ivory leaves when served on the table. They are rich in starch and are fresh and refreshing.

Milk soup with cattail

The picture comes from the Internet

It can only be said that the Chinese people's love of eating has existed since ancient times. It was recorded as early as in "The Book of Songs·Daya·Han Yi" - the fresh vegetables had to be new bamboo shoots and cattails, and the gifts were large carriages pulled by four horses for nobles to ride.

Some dishes made with cattail have been passed down to this day. Almost wherever there is water and cattail, there are some cattail delicacies, such as "Cattail in Milk Soup" and "Fried Cattail with Meat" in Jinan; "Fried Cattail with Eggs" in Yangzhou; "Cattail with Fried Eggs" and "Cattail with Chicken Congee" in Huai'an; and even in Yunnan's steamed chicken and various rice noodles.

Typha latifolia

So, can grilled eel be related to cattail? Yes, it is. In the Edo period, Japanese people called grilled eel grilled eel grilled eel because the grilled eel skewered on bamboo sticks looked like the inflorescence of cattail. No wonder we have never heard of grilling any other fish.

But is this...really like it?

The eel shook his head after hearing this.

If you are a wild adventure enthusiast like Bear Grylls, cattail will be an "all-powerful" existence for you.

If you get lost while trying to survive in the wild (which you better not do), you can use cattail shoots and underground stems to temporarily fill your stomach. If you want to spend a long night in the wild to avoid unknown animals, you need a fire - the fluffy seeds of cattails can serve as a good ignition. Stuff them under your clothes to keep warm.

The cattail leaves can also help you cool down. If you are handy, you can weave a cattail fan with the cattail leaves after harvesting and drying them.

There are two common types of cattail leaf fans. The harder ones are made from a leaf of the cattail palm, while the softer and tougher ones can be woven from cattail or water candle leaves. I wonder how many people can still make hand-woven cattail leaf fans.

The slender leaves of cattail are suitable for weaving. They are soft and tough at the same time, making the woven fabrics flexible and durable. They are common in our lives. For example, the earliest futon was made of cattail. When it spread to places where there were no cattails, straw or bamboo shoots were used as raw materials.

The demand for cattail fans, cattail cushions, and even cattail mats and cattail shoes has greatly decreased in modern times. In addition to being used as sausages as prank props, cattails can be left in water bodies to purify water quality or used for flower arrangements . Just don't wait until they are overly mature, or the cattails will explode.

Written by | Lin Sui

Some pictures are from | TuChong Creative

WeChat Editor | Happy

Source: Museum