Łódź, Botanical Garden

It is native to northern Africa, Europe, middle & western temperate Asia, China, and naturalised in North America. Edible plant - rhizomes raw or cooked, they can be boiled and eaten like potatoes or macerated and then boiled to yield a sweet syrup; rhizomes can also be dried, ground into a powder and then used as a thickener in soups or added to cereal flours; young shoots in spring raw or cooked, an asparagus substitute; base of mature stem raw or cooked; young flowering stem raw, cooked or made into a soup; seeds cooked, also an edible oil could be made of the seeds; pollen raw or cooked, a protein rich additive to flour used in making bread, porridge. Herbal plant - pollen is diuretic, emmenagogue and haemostatic, the dried pollen is said to be anticoagulant, but when roasted with charcoal it becomes haemostatic; the hairs on the fruiting spikes are used for dressing burns; an infusion of the root has been used in the treatment of gravel. Usable plant - extensive root system makes it very good for stabilizing wet banks of rivers, lakes; it can be grown in reed beds and other water purification systems in order to remove various kinds of pollutants from the water and soil; the female flowers make an excellent tinder and can be lit from the spark of a flint; the pollen is highly inflammable and is used in making fireworks.