Broadleaf Bur-reed

Sparganium eurycarpum

Also known as Giant Bur-reed, Common Bur-reed

At a glance

Family

Typhaceae (the cattail family; older references place it in its own family, Sparganiaceae)

Type

Perennial aquatic and emergent wetland herb

Parts used

Rhizome and young tuber, traditionally; whole plant valued for wildlife habitat

Size

2 to 4 feet tall, sometimes taller, spreading into dense colonies

Bloom

Mid to late summer, small ball-shaped greenish white flower clusters followed by spiky bur-like seed heads

Habitat

Marsh edges, pond margins, slow streams, ditches, and shallow standing water across North America

Acquisition

Grow or buy

This plant in HerbSense

Key benefits

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Vital wildlife habitat

Traditional wild food

Stabilizes muddy shorelines

Water garden beauty

Traditional uses

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Broadleaf bur-reed is better known as a wetland provider than as a medicinal herb. Its starchy rhizomes and young tubers were gathered by some Native American communities from marsh mud in autumn, in the same way people dug wapato and other wetland roots, then roasted or boiled them as a foraged vegetable. The seed heads and shoots have long fed migrating waterfowl, and the plant's real legacy is as a quiet cornerstone of marsh life, feeding both people and wildlife where cattails and bulrush also grow. There is little reliable record of it being used as a household remedy the way other herbs were.

How to grow & use it

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Pairs well with

✦Cattail (Typha)
✦Arrowhead / Wapato (Sagittaria)
✦Pickerelweed (Pontederia)

Substitutes

✦Wapato tuber
✦Cattail rhizome

Choose it when

“For the wild, green fringe at the water's edge, where the marsh does its quiet work.”

Did you know?

Those spiky, floating seed balls that give bur-reed its name are built to travel. They bob on the water's surface and are dispersed both by currents and by the ducks and geese that eat them, which is why a single healthy patch of bur-reed can seed an entire marsh over time.

Safety

Broadleaf bur-reed itself isn't documented as toxic, but it grows in the same marshy ground as water hemlock, one of the most poisonous plants in North America, so never gather a wetland root without expert identification.