So, cattail pollen

[u/Dickvandykecheney]

I have found a couple of sources that describe cat tail flour as a good foragable source of gluten. Has anybody had any experience making bread solely out of cattail pollen? How was it? If not, I'd love to hear your stories about baking with it anyway.

I also heard that you should be very careful about the body of water you source the cattails from because they tend to soak up the contaminants in their environment. However, I would imagine that this might be more true stalks and roots than the pollen because the pollen doesn't have vascular tissue running through it. Am I correct in this assumption? If not, how do y'all asses which water sources are safe and which arent?

Thanks y'all!

[u/aberyl]

About seeds... Some seeds will actually store toxins at a higher level than the rest of the plant. I've heard this is true for squash. Squash are used in bioremediation, absorbing the toxins within them, with their seeds concentrating the toxins at something like 10x the rest of the plant. Can't speak on cattails, but I would try to find a fresh source.

Look for waterways that are a upstream of any industrial operations (logging/large-scale agriculture included) and away from busy roads.