Herba Cana - Northeastern Illinois University

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The Ethnobotany 499
to either Phragmites or Arundo. ‘‘Reed’’ dates from ca.
A.D. 725, being equated in a publication that year to
harundo and canna. Although similar, harundo is not
related to Latin hirundo, the swallow.
Obviously, the concepts of reed, cane, bamboo,
and pipe are all interrelated and applied to numerous
plants. The first requirement is that the grasses are
comparatively large and have either a woody stem or
one that is somewhat lignified. The most useful part of
the grasses is the stem, and that has served people
throughout the world in many ways.
Perhaps at least partly because Phragmites is most
widely distributed, it is a well-known plant (e.g.,
Howard and Powell 1963, Kenk 1963, Baranov 1967,
Core 1967, Johnston 1970, Morton 1970, Turner and
Bell 1971, de la Cruz 1978, Heiser 1978, Bailey and
Danin 1981, Wolverton 1982, Cunningham and Milton
1987, Timbrook 1990). The species grows from
southern Canada to the central United States, to
California, Louisiana, Florida, the West Indies, and
from Mexico to Chile and Argentina. Phragmites also
grows widely in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
The genus Phragmites was created by French botanist
Michel Adanson who called it that because the grass
grows along streams and ‘‘fences’’ them from nearby
areas. These are the plants called kaneh or qáneh in
Hebrew versions of the Bible (Zohary 1982), and
ancient Egyptians used the culms as ‘‘quill’’ pens.
Phragmites was well known to the Europeans when
they first arrived in the Americas.
In the New World, Europeans continued their old
names for the plants. Dutch speakers use a word
closest to English, when they say riet [rietje, rif]. The
Germans call the reed Rohr. The French borrowed that
term and say roseau (from Old French ros). Speakers
of French also have a Latin derivative, chaume (from
Latin calamus), but this is more often applied to straw
as for a thatch roof. Romance languages continued
using their Latin-based words, in Portuguese cana,
Spanish caña, and Italian canna. Gaelic speakers called
it saesgean, which also means an area dominated by
moors or fens.
Europeans in the Americas also compared Phragmites
with the Old World sugarcane (Saccharum
officinarum), saying caña de Indio (Panama, Puerto
Rico) and soccos. They use that comparison because
both plants provide sweets. Fernald et al. (1958)
described the process of Phragmites extraction. Stems
are gathered before flowering, dried in the sun, and
ground or beaten into flour. The finer parts are sifted
out and moistened to make a gummy mass that is
roasted by a fire until it swells and browns slightly. The
material is eaten like taffy or marshmallows.
There is also a sweet edible gum exuded from
damage caused by insects (the mealy plum aphid,
Hyalopterus arundinis). Although Hodgson (2001)
suggested that the use of the sweet extract from
Phragmites called manna by the Europeans and
cadece (juice of the reed) by the Cochimis was
originally restricted to the California area, its use
seems to have been more widespread. It may be the
abundance of historical documents from the California
region that gives the impression of a focus there.
Many people, including Akimel and Tohono O’odham
(Pima and Papago), Paiutes, Panamints, Yavapais,
Cocopas, and others certainly showed the Europeans
the sweet material. Europeans then left behind written
accounts.
Other native American names compare Phragmites
with cane (Arundinaria gigantea) or maize (Zea
mays). The Seminoles say koha:ha:ká (Creek) and
oɬ á:ná:bí (Mikasuki), referring to Arundinaria, which
they call by the simple terms kohá (Creek), kóha
(Muskogee), or oɬ á:ni (Mikasuki). In Yucatán, the
Maya say it is halal (cane-like corn stalks), or sakhalal
[zak-halal, zachalal] (sak, white, halal).
From British Columbia through the western United
States to Panama, the young shoots are served as a
potherb (Fernald et al. 1958, Duke 1968, 1972, Moser
and Felger 1985, Hodgson 2001). In the 1870s the
English botanist Mrs. Phoebe Lankester noted that
the young shoots, especially where protected from
light, ‘‘made an excellent pickle’’ (Fernald et al. 1958).
As late as 1942, Mr. and Mrs. Whittrock commented
that indigenous people in New Jersey boiled the
rhizomes like potatoes, and in the early spring they
cooked the young shoots like asparagus (Fernald et al.
1958). The rhizomes may be harvested during any
season and eaten raw or ground into flour.
The seeds are hard to extract from the chaff, but
they were cooked and eaten by people from New
England to Oregon and south to the Sonoran Desert
and probably elsewhere (Fernald et al. 1958, Mabberley
1997, Hodgson 2001). Sometimes the chaff was
allowed to remain on the seeds. Again in New Jersey,
the Whittrocks recorded that local indigenous people
did not remove the hull, but cooked the whole grain
into a reddish gruel, colored by the hull. They added
that it was ‘‘wholesome as a food, though not too
appetizing in appearance’’ (Fernald et al. 1958).
People from the Thompson of British Columbia
and the Okanagon of the Washington and Canada
border to the Zapotecs of Oaxaca use Phragmites to
prepare mats (Reko 1945, Mabberley 1997). Surely,
people in the eastern parts of North America did the
same although they made more use of cane (see
Arundinaria). Some of the mats were used to dry
food, while others were for sleeping and other
purposes (Rea 1997, Moerman 1998).