Cattail gel protects the plant from microbes and soothes human skin too

Evidence

When you pull the leaf bases apart, gobs of cattail gel stretch like clear watery mucus between the leaves. At first it seems gross, but then you notice how good your hands feel. I’ve often heard herbalists say that “the cure grows near to the cause,” and, accordingly, though gathering cattails is guaranteed to get you sunburned and itchy, the antidote to discomfort is in the plants themselves. Clear and cool and clean, the gel is refreshing and antimicrobial, the swamp’s answer to aloe vera gel. The cattails make the gel as a defense against microbes and to keep the leaf bases moist when water levels drop. These same properties that protect the plant protect us too. It feels so soothing on sunburn that soon the students are smearing themselves with slime. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 820

Categorization

• CANDY: The swamp’s answer to aloe vera gel — cattail slime soothes sunburn — is a delightfully shareable fact.
• XREF: Herbalists’ aphorism ‘the cure grows near to the cause’ resonates with the reader’s eco-justice and reciprocity themes: remedies embedded in the place that creates harm.