Water Horsetail

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Water Horsetail

The Water Horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile), also known as the Swamp Horsetail, is a perennial

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. When used by gardeners or horticulturalists, this term applies specifically to perennial herbaceous plants....
horsetail

Horsetail

Equisetum is the only living genus in the Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. They are commonly known as horsetails....
that commonly grows in dense colonies along freshwater shorelines or in shallow water, growing in ponds, swamp

Swamp

A swamp is a wetland featuring temporary or permanent inundation of large areas of land, by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a substantial number of hammock , or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation....
s, ditches, and other sluggish or still waters with mud bottoms. It is a herbaceous

Herbaceous

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaf and stem that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. A herbaceous plant may be Annual plant, Biennial plant or Perennial plant....
species, growing 30-100 cm (rarely 140 cm) tall with erect dark green stems 2-8 mm in diameter, smooth, with about 10-30 fine ridges.

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Encyclopedia

The Water Horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile), also known as the Swamp Horsetail, is a perennial

Perennial plant

Horsetail

Swamp

Herbaceous

Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
5-10 mm long. Many, but not all, stems also have whorls of short ascending and spreading branches 1-5 cm long, with the longest branches on the lower middle of the stem. The side branches are slender, dark green, and have 1-8 nodes with a whorl of five scale leaves at each node. The Water Horsetail has the largest central hollow of the horsetails, with 80% of the stem diameter typically being hollow.

The stems readily pull apart at the joints, and both fertile and sterile stems look alike.

The Water Horsetail reproduces both by spore

Spore

In biology, a spore is a reproduction structure that is adapted for biological dispersal and surviving for extended periods of time in unfavorable conditions....
s and vegetatively by rhizome

Rhizome

In botany, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal plant stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes....
s. It primarily reproduces by vegetative means, with the majority of shoots arising from rhizomes. Spores are produced in blunt-tipped cones at the tips of some stems. The spore cones are yellowish-green, 1-2 cm long and 1 cm broad, with numerous scales in dense whorls.

The Water Horsetail ranges throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of the equator?the word sphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator....
, from Eurasia

Eurasia

Eurasia is a large landmass covering about 53,990,000 km? or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface . Often considered a single continent, Eurasia comprises the traditional continents of Europe and Asia, concepts which date back to classical antiquity and the borders for which are somewhat arbitrary....
south to central Spain

Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
, northern Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
, China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, Korea

Korea

Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries, a civilization, and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia....
and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
, and in North America

North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
from the Aleutian Islands

Aleutian Islands

The Aleutian Islands are a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands forming a volcanic arc in the Northern Pacific Ocean, occupying an area of 6,821 sq mi and extending about 1,200 mi westward from the Alaska Peninsula toward the Kamchatka Peninsula....
to Newfoundland, south to Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The area was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before the arrival of traders, explorers and settlers....
, Idaho

Idaho

The State of Idaho is a U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America. The state's largest city and Capital is Boise, Idaho....
, northwest Montana

Montana

Montana is a U.S. state in the Western United States. The western third of the state contains numerous mountain ranges; other 'island' ranges are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains....
, northeast Wyoming

Wyoming

The State of Wyoming is a sparsely populated U.S. state in the Northwestern United States of the United States. The majority of the state is dominated by the mountain ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountains, while the easternmost section of the state is a high altitude prairie region known as the High Plains ....
, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a U.S. state in the Appalachian, Upland South, and Mid-Atlantic States regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia on the southeast, Kentucky on the southwest, Ohio on the northwest, and Pennsylvania and Maryland on the northeast....
and Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia is an United States U.S. state on the East Coast of the United States of the Southern United States. The state is known as the "Old Dominion" and sometimes as "Mother of Presidents", because it is the birthplace of Lists of United States Presidents by place of birth#By state....
.

This horsetail is sometimes seen as an invasive species

Invasive species

Invasive species is a phrase with several definitions. The first definition expresses the phrase in terms of non-indigenous species that adversely affect the habitats they invade economically, environmentally or ecologically....
because it is very hardy and tends to overwhelm other garden plants unless it is contained. When planting, it is best to plant them with the rhizome in a container.

The Water Horsetail is most often confused with the Marsh Horsetail E. palustre, which has rougher stems with fewer (4-8) stem ridges with a smaller hollow in the stem centre, and longer spore cones 2-4 cm long.

Uses

The Water Horsetail has historically been used by both Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
ans and Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
for scouring, sanding, and filing because of the high silica content in the stems. Early spring shoots were eaten. Medically it was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to stop bleeding and treat kidney

Kidney

The kidneys are Organ that have numerous biological roles. Their primary role is to maintain the homeostasis balance of bodily fluids by filtering and secreting Metabolomics#Metabolitess and minerals from the blood and excreting them, along with water , as urine....
ailments, ulcer

Ulcer

An ulcer is a discontinuity of the skin exhibiting complete loss of the epidermis and often portions of the dermis and even subcutaneous fat....
s, and tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacterium, mainly Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect the central nervous system, the lymphatic system, the circulatory system, the genitourinary system, the gastrointestinal system, bones, joints, and even the...
, and by the ancient Chinese to treat superficial visual obstructions. Rootstocks and stems are sometimes eaten by waterfowl

Waterfowl

Waterfowl are certain wildfowl of the order Anseriformes, especially members of the family Anatidae, which includes ducks, goose, and swans.They are strong swimmers with medium to large bodies....
. Horsetails absorb heavy metals from the soil

Soil

Soil is the naturally occurring, unconsolidated or loose covering on the Earth's surface. Soil is composed of particles of broken rock that have been altered by chemical and environmental processes including weathering and erosion....
, and are often used in bioassays for metals.

According to Carolus Linnaeus

Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
, reindeer

Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou when wild in North America, is an Arctic and Subarctic-dwelling deer, widespread and numerous across the northern Holarctic....
, which refuse ordinary hay, will eat this horsetail, which is juicy, and that it is cut as fodder in the north of Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
for cows, with a view to increasing their milk

Milk

Milk is an opaque white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals . It provides the primary source of nutrition for newborn mammals before they are able to digestion other types of food....
yield, but that horse

Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
s will not touch it.

External links

- basic information on the Water Horsetail.