Flowerless-Plant Study 



699 



THE FIELD HORSETAIL 



Teacher's Story 



These queer, pale plants grow in 

 sandy or gravelly soil, and since they 

 appear so early in the spring they are 

 objects of curiosity to children. The 

 stalk is pale and uncanny looking; 

 the pinkish stem, all the same size 

 from bottom to top, is ornamented at 

 intervals with upward-pointing, 

 slender, black, sharp-pointed scales, 

 which unite at the bottom and en- 

 circle the stalk in a slightly bulging 

 ring, a ring which shows a ridge for 

 every scale, extending down the stem. 

 These black scales are really leaves 

 springing from a joint in the stem, but 

 they forgot long ago how to do a 

 leaf's work of getting food from the 

 air. The "blossom" which is not a 

 real blossom in the eye of the botanist, 

 is made up of rows of tiny discs which 

 are set like miniature toadstools 

 around the central stalk. Before it is 

 ripe, there extends back from the edge 

 of each disc a row of little sacs stuffed 

 so full of green spores that they look 

 united like a row of tiny green ridges. 

 The discs at the top of the fertile spike 

 discharge their spores first, as can be 

 seen by shaking the plant over white 



paper, the falling spores looking J, Fertile plant of the field horsetail; 2, spore; 

 like pale green powder. The burst and 3, disk discharging spores; 4, disk with 

 empty sacs are whitish, and hang s * 



around the discs in torn scallops, after the spores are shed. The spores, 

 when seen under the microscope, are wonderful objects, each a little 

 green ball with four spiral bands wound about it. These spirals uncoil 

 and throw the spore, giving it a movement as of something alive. The 

 motor power in these living springs is the absorbing of moisture. 



The beginning of the sterile shoot can be seen like a green bit of the 

 blossom spike of the plantain; but later, after the fertile stalks have 

 died down, these cover the ground with their strange fringes. 



The person who first called these sterile plants "horsetails" had an 

 overworked imagination, or none at all ; for the only quality the two have 

 in common is brushiness. A horse which had the hair of its tail set in 

 whorls with the same precision as this plant has its branches would be one 

 of the world's wonders. The Equicetum is one of the plants which give 

 evidence of nature's resourcefulness ; its remote ancestors probably had a 

 whorl of leaves at each joint or node of the main stem and branches; but 

 the plant now having so many green branches, does not really need the 

 leaves, and thus they have been reduced to mere points, and look like 



