1st June 2013. © Peter Hillman
Family Equisetaceae (Horsetails)
Height up to 2m.
This is Britain’s largest horsetail, with pinkish-brown fertile stems, and the sterile stems are whitish with 20 to 40 fine grooves. The sterile stems are heavily branched with between 20 to 40 emerging from each node.
Fertile stems ripen in April, and sterile stems appear soon afterwards and remain throughout the summer until they die down in late autumn.
Found in damp shady places, like pool edges, ditches and marshes in woodland. A native species, and fairly frequent and widespread in England and Wales, and less so in the north.
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