Vk 
Equisetaceaee Horsetail Family. 
sews 
Rush-like or feathery bushy plants with typically harsh, roughened 
stems by abundant silica tubercles, The Eidomues perennial, slender, often 
vertical, tapering, blackish, freely branching in age, with tufts of fine 
hypha-like brown roots.at the nodese Aerial stems evergreen and perennial 
or annual, erectysimple or with verticillate branches at the nodes, the 
internodes hollow, fragile, finely fluted or grooved, Leaves minute, 
reduced to dark often bristle-like teeth united by their bases into 
cylindrical sheaths; ¢e sheaths, now green and unbanded, now strongly  _ 
a aaa always covering the nodes, Strobili of two kinds, either " Mh 
7 gb often pale and whitish) appearing, before | enone sterile verticillates =] 
cae a ee : 
branched shoots, yor acativedl, often dark or blackish, terminal upon the 
tips of the ordinary rush-like unbranched shootse Sporephylis arranged in 
close-set circles upon a central axis, often hexagonal, bearing the sporangia 
as pendant sac-like structures from the peitate summit of the sporophylle 
Spores of one kind, green,encircled by 4 hygroscopic ribbon-like bands 
shah ort 
Wi 
(elaters), effective in spore dispersal, 
4 
1. Equisetum L, Horsetail. Scouring Rush. 
Characters of the familye 
