After finishing my hike up and over Mount Greylock, I came upon a large stand of rough horsetails (Equisetum hyemale) at the base of the mountain, at the edge of a boggy, wetland area. These plants are primarily found in riparian zones, around springs and seeps, in wet forests or other wetland areas. The rough horsetail has 2- to 3-foot tall vertical jointed hollow reed-like green stalks. Each node, or joint, along the stalk is marked by a ring of tiny, clasping, leaves, which are fused into a 1/4”-long ash-gray sheath with a black band around both the top and bottom. The genus name Equisetum comes from the Latin words equus meaning a horse and seta meaning a bristle.

Although the plant lacks typical leaf structures, photosynthesis is carried on by the both types of stems: vegetative and fertile. Although both resemble each other, the fertile stalks bear fruiting heads, which contain the reproductive spores. With the help of branching, spreading rhizomes, It can spread to form large colonies, like the one pictured below.

Rough horsetails, also called scouring rush, are native to large areas of Canada, the United States and Eurasia. The stems have a high silica content and were used by early Americans for polishing pots and pans, giving rise to name “scouring rush”. Horsetails are not, however, rushes.  Nor are they ferns. Plants within the genus Equisetum are essentially living fossils. They represent the only living members in the entire class of Equisetopsida, a group of vascular plants that reproduce using spores rather than seeds that dominated during the Paleozoic period. Back then, this class of plants was not only much more diverse, but they also grew up to 100 feet tall and more closely resembled trees than today’s diminutive horsetails. Today, this group is categorized as fern allies in large part because they, like the ferns, are non-flowering, seedless plants which reproduce by spores.