Following the super interesting presentation on Nyungar food by Steve McCabe we asked him to share a story on intriguing Typha with us in writing. Enjoy the read. Big Thanks Steve:
Two species of the Typha occur in WA – Typha domingensis and Typha orientalis.The best way to tell the two species apart is to measure the leaf width, if most leaves are broader than 8mm, it is probably T. orientalis.
Typha species have many common names including bulrush, cattail, reedmace and cooper’s flag reed.
On March 29, 1834, less than five years after the 63rd regiment arrived to take possession of Western Australia for the British Crown, the Swan River colonist George Fletcher Moore recorded in his diary that Nyungar people were:
“now busy digging the root of a broad sort of flag which grows in a swamp near this; some people say that this makes sago, or rather arrowroot.”
Two days later (April 2, 1834) he wrote:
“Got from the natives a piece of bread made of the root of the flag which they called yand-yett. It tastes like a cake of oatmeal. They peel the root, roast it and pound it, and bake it. The root is as thick as your finger, and a foot long.”
George Grey walked to the Swan River from Gantheaume Bay north of Geraldton in 1839. His journals record that it was towards the start of this journey that his party first came across:
“the yun-jid, or flag (a species of typha)”
From this we can comfortably assume that the food plant referred to by Moore is a broad sort of Typha.
Furthermore, on Wednesday 28 September 1842 the botanist James Drummond wrote a letter (one in a series he wrote in a series of letters on the botany of Western Australia to the Editor of the Inquirer Newspaper – a newspaper printed in Perth 1840 – 1855). This letter tentatively, and incorrectly, identifies a food plant known as ‘yandyait’ to species but leaves absolutely no doubt that it is a Typha. The Nyungar name recorded in this letter suggests strongly that it is very likely the same plant referred to by both Moore and Grey:
“The natural orders Aroidea: and Typhae of Jussieu, united by Dr. Brown, contain, in the tropical parts of Australia, several interesting plants; but the only plant which I have observed which requires notice with us, is the plant which Mr. Brown as the Typha Angustifolia of Linneus, but with a mark of doubt. This plant is an important one to the natives, as it furnishes them, at one season of the year, with a large portion of their food. When the white men first settled in this colony, the natives of the Canning, Upper Swan, Lower Swan, and Perth districts, were in the habit of meeting annually in the autumn, in the vicinity of a swamp on Grove Farm, now the property of Mr. John Hanley ; these meetings lasted for several days, and I observed that on these occasions they principally fed upon the roots of the Typha which they call yandyait. They strip off the outer covering of the long creeping roots, reserving the pith, which contains a large quantity of starch; they generally cut the roots into convenient lengths, and roast them in the ashes, and chew the whole, spitting out the fibry parts ; but sometimes they split up the roots, collect the starch in their cloaks, and bake it into cakes. The plant is abundant in most of our lakes and rivers, but it is only in the autumn months, when the plant is in a state of rest, that it contains much starch in the roots”.
On the 19th of January 1839 the botanist Ludwig Preiss collected a specimen of Typha in a swampy location at the base of Mount Eliza to contribute to his extensive collection of the plants of Western Australia and Southwest WA. This plant was originally identified as Typha shuttleworthii. Beneath the description of T. shuttleworthii published in the botanical work based upon his collections [‘Plantae Preissianae’ by J.G.C Lehmann, published in Hamburg in the 1840s] is an observation made by Preiss in Latin:
“Radicis partem interiorem aborigines edunt,”
Which translates as: Aboriginal People eat the inner part of the root.
This specimen, collected by Ludwig Preiss at the very dawn of the still unfolding biological apocalypse (a short glance at the facts will vindicate this choice of words), was later renamed Typha muelleri, then again renamed – Typha orientalis.
Eyre in volume 2 of his Journal refers to a ‘broad flag-reed’ near Esperance (June 19 1841).
He had earlier written (May 31 1841) that it was:
“an excellent and nutritious article of food. This root being dug up, and roasted in hot ashes, yields a great quantity of a mealy farinaceous powder interspersed among the fibres; it is of an agreeable flavour, wholesome and satisfying to the appetite. In all parts of Australia, even where other food abounds, the root of this reed is a favourite and staple article of diet among the aborigines. The proper season of the year for procuring it in full perfection, is after the floods have receded, and the leaves have died away and been burnt off.”
Perhaps referencing Drummond’s identification and Eyre’s description, G.F. Moore published the following in his work ‘A descriptive vocabulary of the language in common use amongst the aborigines of Western Australia’ in 1884:
“Yanjidi, s.—An edible root of a species of flag (Typha angustifolia), growing along fresh-water streams and the banks of pools. It consists of many tender filaments with layers of a farinaceous substance between. The natives dig the roots up, clean them, roast them, and then pound them into a mass, which, when kneaded and made into a cake, tastes like flour not separated from the bran. This root is in season in April and May, when the broad leaves will have been burned by the summer fires, by which the taste, according to native ideas, is improved”.
Roasting the roots of Typha caramelises some of the starch, sweetening it and improving the flavour for humans generally. A related species prepared by simply roasting then peeling off the charred skin to access the central starchy core has been described as tasting like a combination of potato and sweet chestnut.
I believe that the culturally significant seasonal starch staple ‘yanchet’ is Typha orientalis and that this species was widely distributed at the time Western Australia was colonized. It is likely, however, that both of our Typha species were used as food as George Grey listed “Typha – two species” under the heading ‘Roots Eaten by the Natives’ in his journals (p. 292 Vol. 2. 1841) – only a ‘narrow flag reed’, which would be Typha domingensis, never rates a mention in any of the early accounts.
People once managed this plant directly with fire as part of their tending of it for food. Typha orientalis behaves like a weed in the absence of management – and would have behaved like a crop in a polyculture under original management quite simply because it was a crop in a vast polyculture (see B. Gammage “The Biggest Estate on Earth” for insight into the scope and scale of the land management undertaken by people prior to 1788). The firestick is a gardening tool which at many times and in many places is now often highly illegal to use and it is one which we ‘new arrivals’ are not particularly expert with. Perhaps including yanchet in our food gardens may help us to learn some of the skills necessary to one day become a people who can manage country for abundance.
Reference:
Drummond, J., 1842. On the botany of Western Australia. Letter VIII.. Inquirer (Perth, WA) , Wednesday 28 September 1842. 3.
Eyre, E.J., 1845. Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound in the years 1840-1, Volume 2. Sent by the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of their Relations with Europeans. London: T.W. Boone.
Gammage, B., 2011. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London: Allen & Unwin.
Grey, G., 1841. Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia During the Years 1837, 38 and 39: Describing Many Newly Discovered, Important and Fertile Districts : with Observations on the Moral and Physical Condition of the Aboriginal Inhabitants, Volume 2 . London: T. and W. Boone.
Moore, G.F., 1884. Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia, and also A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language of the Aborigines. London: M. Walbrook.
Priess, L. and Lehmann, C., 1847. Plantae Preissianae sive enumeratio plantarum: Quas in Australasia occidentali et meridionali-occidentali annis 1838-1841, Volume 2. Hamburg: Meissner.
Ray Mears’ Wild Food 2007. Episode 3: Wetlands. television program. BBC 2, UK.