Typha latifolia called cattail, reedmace, and other names is a plant we have evidence was eaten in prehistoric Europe. What if Europeans manage to cultivate it?
WI: Europeans Cultivate Cattails?
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From pine's bark to cattails, prehistoric men eat what they could to not starve. In Neolithic or historical times, you take what you can and you better not being picky.
It can continues up to nowadays, by tradition : here, by example, we eat responcons (Dioscorea Communis, sort of really bitter aspargus); and I'm really not sure that cattails ceased to be eaten after the Neolithic : it's typically what forms the basic knowledge about what's edible and what's not that existed up to the XIX century.
But these plants weren't cultivated for several reasons :
- It basically grows without help, at each season.
- Critically for water plants, it ask for irrigation and big masses of water (with all the sanitary risks it implies)
- For the same sum of work, you can have more productive cereals or plants.
It can continues up to nowadays, by tradition : here, by example, we eat responcons (Dioscorea Communis, sort of really bitter aspargus); and I'm really not sure that cattails ceased to be eaten after the Neolithic : it's typically what forms the basic knowledge about what's edible and what's not that existed up to the XIX century.
But these plants weren't cultivated for several reasons :
- It basically grows without help, at each season.
- Critically for water plants, it ask for irrigation and big masses of water (with all the sanitary risks it implies)
- For the same sum of work, you can have more productive cereals or plants.
1. Growing without help seems like a benefit, less work for the farmer.
2. How do other cultures that use water agriculture, like rice in Asia, deal with the problem?
3. Off hand it seems like cattails would be more productive, just from the variety of uses. I've looked before and haven't had much luck finding direct comparisons though.
2. How do other cultures that use water agriculture, like rice in Asia, deal with the problem?
3. Off hand it seems like cattails would be more productive, just from the variety of uses. I've looked before and haven't had much luck finding direct comparisons though.
Growing without help is the exact opposite of cultivate. If you don't need to work it, then...you don't.
Well first, rice have an insane productivity : so there some motivation to work on it (and is one of the explanation why China had pre-industrial Europe equivalent techniques in agriculture since the Antiquity).
Chinese climate doesn't give much choice as well : being sub-tropical with the corresponding rain rates...
They have many uses, but outside food it's less interesting after the Prehistoric era : helps to ignite fire, useful to clean a place, can serve as putting in tents or houses on the ground, etc.
And when plants were cultivated, usually few characteristics were kept ; the ones that interested farmers the most. So, I would think that multiplicity of usages and cultivation would have been contradictory at long term.
Reading through Bahlow's place name book, it seems that half the placenames in Germany originally meant X{bog, swamp, marsh, wetlands, fen, ....} in any of the local languages.
Now, otl, the monks came in and drained the land, making it usable for higher yield modern farming methods. But what if the Prussians, say, (the original Baltic speakers) converted to Catholicism much earlier and stayed on their swampy land. In that case marsh plants like cat tails might have been useful.
Now, otl, the monks came in and drained the land, making it usable for higher yield modern farming methods. But what if the Prussians, say, (the original Baltic speakers) converted to Catholicism much earlier and stayed on their swampy land. In that case marsh plants like cat tails might have been useful.
And then German or Poles colons, that are ready to drain and use these lands, came and outnumbers or assimilate Old Prussians.
While Prussian subdivisions were separated by many swamps, forests, rivers, etc., they had an agriculture and weren't especially backward swamp-fisher or a Bayou inhabitant caricature.
Let's use an early conversion in the IX with St. Aldabert of Prague. I would think how more likely than a Prussian chief, using Western christianised Slavs institutions to reinforce his power on a mostly tribal/clientelist base, wouldn't hesitate to use the same features than OTL to have a bit more than a swampy lands with alligators...sorry, fishes.
Does anyone know if any dishes can be made from cattails that taste good?
Depending of what kind, different part were eaten.
Some, it was the stalk. At the taste (once removed the first layer) it's not that different than grass.
Other, it was the root that was extracted for making sort of a flour. Or the root of some other kind of cattail can be eaten, if young enough, as an asparagus (but basically every young plant can be eaten as an asparagus)
Really, there is far more edible plans that don't require cultivation than anyone could retain all of their names. We barely have some memory that managed to stay in our time (Nettle soup, by example).
As I understand it, it's highly productive.
But one of the downsides, apparently, is that cattails will eventually 'pollute' their own beds with their waste/by products and be unable to thrive. Their turf is eventually taken up by other marsh plants. Basically, you'd need some form of marsh crop rotation.
The big issue with cattails in Europe may be as simple as not enough water.
But one of the downsides, apparently, is that cattails will eventually 'pollute' their own beds with their waste/by products and be unable to thrive. Their turf is eventually taken up by other marsh plants. Basically, you'd need some form of marsh crop rotation.
The big issue with cattails in Europe may be as simple as not enough water.
A newspaper article: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...Uw1ZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UkYNAAAAIBAJ&pg=1086,798268
Dr. March could harvest 140 tons of rhizomes per acre, which is 32 tons of flour. I presume this is with modern equipment and intentional management, other references I've found are 6,475 pounds of flour per acre. And that's a giant difference.
More protein than corn or rice, but slightly less than wheat or potatoes.
Only potato flour has more minerals.
Lower water content than other flours, except wheat flour.
Dr. March could harvest 140 tons of rhizomes per acre, which is 32 tons of flour. I presume this is with modern equipment and intentional management, other references I've found are 6,475 pounds of flour per acre. And that's a giant difference.
More protein than corn or rice, but slightly less than wheat or potatoes.
Only potato flour has more minerals.
Lower water content than other flours, except wheat flour.
katchen
Banned
It sounds like cattails could have done well in areas of permanent marshland such as the Rhine Delta, the Danube Delta, the Pripyat Marshes and hugely, the West Siberian Marshes, where the Yakuts lived through much of antiquity apparently after starting out in Northern India of all places. Someone would have needed to learn how to create "cattail paddies" and after a time, rotate the crops with something else. Actually, rice, maybe. Rice can grow in surprisingly cold climates. Rice is grown in British Columbia's Fraser River Valley, for instance. As long as there's enough water to keep the field flooded.
It might be as simple as luck or circumstance.
One thing is that an established domesticate can block other potential domesticates.
The grain based agriculture that spread out of the middle east was a mature agricultural package which incorporated its own skill sets, domestic animals, and economy.
A rival agricultural package and crops, if it was mature, could pose a challenge. Rice from Asia, or Potatoes and Corn from the Americas.
But it would be extremely difficult for one to emerge from a standing start to compete against a mature package.
One thing is that an established domesticate can block other potential domesticates.
The grain based agriculture that spread out of the middle east was a mature agricultural package which incorporated its own skill sets, domestic animals, and economy.
A rival agricultural package and crops, if it was mature, could pose a challenge. Rice from Asia, or Potatoes and Corn from the Americas.
But it would be extremely difficult for one to emerge from a standing start to compete against a mature package.
Dunno.
Grain based agriculture might have spread a lot more easily across Europe. Better territory.
Cattail based agriculture might have been a lot less portable.
As to when or whether it could have taken off, who knows. I assume that the consequence would be population densities and sophisticated cultures emerging in Central and Northern Europe, rivalling and interchanging with the Mediteranean cultures.
Grain based agriculture might have spread a lot more easily across Europe. Better territory.
Cattail based agriculture might have been a lot less portable.
As to when or whether it could have taken off, who knows. I assume that the consequence would be population densities and sophisticated cultures emerging in Central and Northern Europe, rivalling and interchanging with the Mediteranean cultures.
Why do you think that?
They need at least damp earth, but considering how wide spread they are they don't seem difficult to establish somewhere.
Well, you need marshland, or water saturated lands for cattails. So you could figure cattail agriculture would spread and thrive in those areas. But how much of the potential arable land in Europe would fit into that particular category. And how much continuity is there between plots of cattail suitable land.
You could extend cattail agriculture with ponding and irrigation. But for that, you'd need density of population and organized labour on a large scale.
On the other hand, grain agriculture probably does well in a variety of locations, relatively dry land, etc. There's probably more suitable land, and there's more continuity of grain lands. So grain might have spread faster and more easily than cattail. Arguably, cattail agriculture might have emerged, been surrounded by grain societies and simply withered away.
It seems quite an enthusiast article, but as you says, first farmers may not have access to modern irrigation, machinery or DDT.
Again, we're talking of cultivate swamps. Not to drain them, but to live on them. I'm not sure that constant work on this, with a population most likely ridden with malaria or any disease this can bear, for a result you can have more easily with wheat or other seeds...
It's not only about inherent productivity, it's about the ammount of work to cultivate something particularly invasive and that is growing well enough without an human help.
People before roman times weren't only mindless brutes clothed with bear furs, and as you can see Baltic Europe had access to agricultural features even before Atlantic coast
Otherwise, basically what DValdron said.
Malaria literally plagued European coasts up to XX century, mostly known on Mediterranean basin arguably but present more widely in Europe. I used it as an example of how living on a swamp can carry grave diseases.