Equisetum telmateia

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. It can grow up to 2m tall.

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.

Photographs of Great Horsetail (Equisetum telmateia), taken June 2013, nature reserve, Staffordshire. © Pete Hillman 2013. Camera used Nikon Coolpix P500.