Photo: Dave Pape, Public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)
Golden Club
Orontium aquaticum
Also known as Never-wet, Neverwet, Floating Arum, Tawkin
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Golden club is better known in the story of the American wetlands than in the herbalist's cabinet. Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Chesapeake and Atlantic coastal plain historically gathered its seeds and thick rootstocks as a starchy food, but only after weeks of drying and thorough roasting or boiling to break down the plant's fiercely acrid crystals, a labor reserved for the lean edges of winter. Colonial-era naturalists took note of the golden spikes rising over the water each spring and folded the plant into their botanical records as a curiosity of the swamp. Today it survives almost entirely as a beloved ornamental, prized by pond gardeners for the same glow that once caught the eye of foragers.
How to grow & use it
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- ✦Remedies & preparations
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“For the pond edge that wants to glow gold before anything else in the water garden has stirred.”
Golden club's leaves are so waxy that water beads and rolls right off them without ever wetting the surface, which is exactly how the plant earned its old country name, never-wet.
All parts of golden club carry the needle-like calcium oxalate crystals typical of the arum family, and eating any part fresh causes immediate, intense burning and swelling of the lips, tongue, and throat. Old accounts describe Algonquian-speaking communities of the mid-Atlantic coastal plain rendering the seeds and rootstocks edible only after weeks of drying followed by thorough roasting or boiling, a slow, exacting process that is not something to attempt at home. Golden club has no established place in modern herbal medicine, and no dose of any part of this plant should ever be taken internally. Keep curious children and pets away from the foliage and fruit at the pond's edge, and always talk to a qualified healthcare professional or a knowledgeable botanist before using any wild plant.