Field Horsetail
Ferns & Moss
A living-fossil plant with feathery, bottlebrush stems stiffened by gritty silica — once used to scour pots, and almost impossible to dig out of a garden.
💡 Fun Facts
- Horsetails are living fossils — their ancestors grew as tall as trees over 300 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs.
- It makes no flowers or seeds: pale, cone-tipped stems pop up first in spring to scatter spores, then feathery green shoots follow.
- Its stems are stiffened with gritty silica (like tiny grains of glass), so people once used it to scrub and polish metal.
📅 Through the Year
- Leaf-out:March to April
- Leaf fall:October to November