#wapato

[unteriors]

S Naches Avenue, Wapato, Washington.

[toothwalker]

Broadleaf Arrowhead, Sagittaria latifolia, also known as Wapato or Duck-potato - the tubers are edible by humans as well as ducks, and were an important food source in pre-colonial North America

Sussex, UK, September 2025

[rjalker]

I have acquired wapato, and a list of a dozen local people so far who say they'd love to get some of their own at the end of the year from seeds or divisions, once I told them what it is.

I am slowly converting more and more people into caring about native plants and realizing how cool they are.

It's especially effective when you make an entire long thing explaining all the cool stuff about it and then say you'll give it to them for free lol

The best place so far I have found to buy Wapato is a seller on eBay who lists a sale for a combination of Wapato, water chestnuts, and Chinese Arrowhead, and they also offer selling you just the Wapato, 25 for $30. That is a ridiculously good deal.

Also, just like the Chinese Arrowhead, Wapato also will regrow just from the shoot, you can eat the tuber and just throw the top part in water and it will regrow!

[image description start. A photo of a hand holding a dark green and slightly curved leaf cluster from Wapato, which is growing long white roots, and has a tiny folded arrowhead shaped leaf just starting to emerge from the rest of the short, pointed leaves. The whole thing is held over a container of algae-filled water. Image description end.]

Also, telling people that this is literally what Katniss from the Hunger Games is named after helps gather some interest, especially because most people did not read the books and assumed her name was just made up out of thin air.

We also have monarchs on our aquatic milkweed for the first time ever!!

[image description start. A close-up photo of a tiny Black, yellow, and white monarch caterpillar, curl around it pink flower buds on an aquatic milkweed plant, which has purple bronze leaves, a reddish stem, and yellow aphids clustered around the top. Image description end.]

I also have now have seeds and a plant of saltmarsh mallow, which I *will* be spreading far and wide.

Also collected some native roseseeds from the wild along with the saltmarsh mallow, but they have to go in the fridge for at least 2 months before they can germinate.

[thebashfulbotanist]

Sagittaria latifolia, called wapato or the more unwieldy "broadleaf arrowhead," is native to most of North America, and everywhere it grows, it has historically been eaten by many, many Native American and First Nations peoples. Still is, in some places! The tubers, while bitter raw, can be eaten like potatoes, being steamed, boiled, or dried and processed later. That said, like a lot of wetland plants, it can absorb pollutants, so if you'd like to try it, I'd advise growing your own and looking for a solid, well-tested recipe.

I like the Confluence Project's article about wapato, which includes more about the history of wapato in the Columbia River area. Here's a section:

In the 1820’s, Native Americans showed the adventuresome botanist David Douglas the secrets of wapato harvesting and he thrived on them almost exclusively when in the field. Wapato is very bitter if eaten raw, but like potatoes they may be boiled, steamed or fire-roasted. Indigenous people dried them, too, for soups or pounded them into cakes (and traded them to newcomers like Lewis and Clark) or ground dried wapato into flour. Other edible parts of wapato include the tender unfurling leaves and stalk. Boil them like other greens. The flower stalk before it blossoms and the lateral tips of the immature rhizomes are also edible, raw or cooked. The white petals of the blossom are tasty raw with a mild mint flavor. [6] In 2011, this sacred first food returned to the Yakama Nation. Wheat lands were transformed to original wetlands after a decades-long restoration process carried out by the tribe. Wapato also returned after a seventy year “respite.” [7]  Wapato was as important to the Yakama diet as other sacred foods like salmon or huckleberries. To celebrate and to reintroduce this first food, a school gym was designated as the feasting hall and laid out like traditional longhouses. By introducing it to students, tribal elders felt that future generations would now have the opportunity to preserve traditions and sacred rituals that had fallen out of practice. Student Emmanuelle Wallahee commented, “I was taught that nothing’s ever lost. It’s just been put away for awhile.” [8]

[zooarchaeologyatdinner]

Last year I experimented with growing Wapato in a bin, since I'm a bit short on riverbanks in my yard.

The bin in early summer, by the end of the summer it was wall-to-wall leaves.

I dug a couple up in November, since late fall/early winter is the traditional harvest season. They were delicious fried.

Today I dug the whole bin up to see how the crop did, and I'm thrilled. I originally planted about a dozen. I harvested somewhere around a hundred and fifty! Replanted most of them, and brought a few in to see if an early spring harvest changes the taste/fibrousness.

I separated the replantings by size, and marked one of the bins of smaller tubers for heavier feeding. It'll be interesting to see how much difference the extra feeding makes and/or of I can select for larger size over generations. If I can breed (or feed) to get more like the ones I'm holding I'll be thrilled.

[vandaliatraveler]

Photos from a late summer bike ride on the Mon River Trail. With autumn just around the corner, the climatic, life-sustaining ceremonies of the season have taken on a frantic, bittersweet urgency, from the proliferation of late summer blooms to the frantic chirrups of insects in search of mates before they succumb to the first frost of October. As the deep greens of summer fade and begin to sacrifice themselves to a fiery self-immolation, I salute Nature’s relentless push to plant the seeds of next year’s renewal.

From top: broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), also known as duck-potato and wapato, an attractive aquatic plant whose edible tuber was an important source of starch for Native Americans; great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica); a showy relative of cardinal flower with blue, split-lip flowers; blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), also known as wild ageratum and blue boneset, an unusual late summer aster with disc flowers only; tall coreopsis (Coreopsis tripteris), also known as tall tickseed, a grand, stately perennial up to 8 feet tall  with distinctive tripartite leaves; a goldenrod soldier beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus) navigating a wingstem flower (Verbesina alternifolia); northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), a colonizing shrub whose luminous yellow leaves in fall contrast with its brilliant-red, aromatic berries; and pale-leaved sunflower ( Helianthus strumosus), a perennial sunflower whose leaves are mostly opposite in arrangement with long petioles and pale undersides.

[rumade]

[Video description: me showing off my Sagittaria latifolia AKA broadleaf arrowhead or wapato or duck potato; growing in the pond in my parents' garden]

Ponds can be kitchen gardens too- there's a not insignificant number of edible aquatics that are worth growing. I chose to try and cultivate this one because it was mentioned in Eric Tosenmier's Edible Perennials book.

Be very careful with aquatic plants that are not native to your area. They can cause a huge amount of damage to the wider ecosystem if they escape.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

The Northwest’s Earliest “Garden” Discovered in British Columbia

The 3,800-year-old stone platform was used to cultivate wapato—wild water potatoes—a staple crop for many North American peoples