Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Archeophyta
Class: Spenopsida
Order: Equisetales
Family: Equisetaceae
The horsetails and scouring-rushes are unusual plants with no true leaves. They are primarily plants of northern temperate regions, with their greatest concentration in northern North America.
These plants prefer sandy soils and will often colonize large areas, sometimes quite densely. There are two principal types: the horsetails, with smaller jointed stems radiating at right angles to the main stem, and the scouring-rushes, with the upright stems only. Spore are borne in cone-like structures at the tips of the stalks.
The horsetails are called such because of their fancied resemblance to horses' tails. The scouring-rushes earned their names because of the silica in their stems which made some of them usable for scouring dishes.
Plants of the genus Equisetum make interesting garden specimens when they can be properly controlled. They are not difficult to transplant if you take a large enough clump, and make sure they have moist sand or soil around their underground parts CONTINUOUSLY.
I have placed the Equisetums, the psilotoids, and the ophioglossoids together in the division Archeophyta because there are studies that show that they may have an ancient common source after the divergence of true ferns and lycopods. They are probably closer to the seed plants than these other groups, but may be slightly more closely related to each other, representing a phyletic, though distantly-related, group.
Species of Equisetum (not yet complete):
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This page was last revised on 11-20-1997.